


Prelude II: Toomed

by mad_martha



Series: The Preludes Series [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe - Canon, Drama, F/M, RST, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-11
Updated: 2012-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-30 23:11:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/337216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mad_martha/pseuds/mad_martha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scully's asked to officially take over the X Files Division, and her first case involves a man with ten inch fingers ....  (Sequel to "Prelude to an X".)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prelude II: Toomed

**Author's Note:**

> This story was first posted circa 1997.

Scully arrived at work in a positive mood, which was not diminished by the unattractive prospect of spending the day sitting opposite her colleague, Agent Colton, while she sorted out her expenses and paperwork from her latest case, an official request for assistance on a multiple homicide in Cleveland.

 

   Colton had been a classmate at Quantico, which perhaps helped a little when dealing with him.  Scully had become inured to his vaulting ambition and casual ability to use others for his own purposes, while making it seem like he was doing it for their benefit; these days she filtered out ninety percent of his conversation - if you could call it conversation, one-sided as it was.

 

   He was reading a newspaper when she arrived, and glanced up at her briefly over the top of it.  "Morning, Dana," he said distractedly, and vanished again.

 

   Good; he wasn't in a mood for talking or - more likely - didn't have some tidbit of gossip to pass on.  That suited Scully fine.  "Morning, Tom," she replied, dumping her coat and briefcase before booting up her computer.

 

   By the time she'd returned from hanging up her coat and getting a coffee, the e-mail icon was blinking impatiently in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.  She clicked on it, and the programme sprang to life.  Three messages.  Scully clicked on the first.

 

   _From:    FMulder@georgetown.edu.net_

_To:        DScully@fbi.net_

_Subject: Mostly Harmless._

_\-------------------------------------------------_

_So, Sherlock, is the game afoot?  Or do you have time to share a cup of something almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea with me this lunchtime?  I'll meet you at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe._

_M._

 

   Scully grinned in spite of herself.  The man was crazy.  The last time she'd seen him, he'd wanted her to accompany him to a psychic convention in Baltimore, but the multiple homicide got in the way.  He'd probably picked up some horrible Outer Mongolian herbal remedy for veruccas, and wanted to palm it off onto her. 

 

   She'd have to meet him for lunch just to find out.

 

   The grin vanished when she clicked on the second message, though.

 

   _From:    JWillis@quantico.fbi.edu_

_To:        DScully@fbi.net_

_Subject: -_

_\-------------------------------------------------_

_D -_

_This is stupid.  We need to talk.  I'll meet you at Valchera's for lunch, okay?  1:00._

_J._

 

   Scully angrily shoved the cursor-arrow towards the 'delete' button, and consigned the message to the recycle bin.  He had a damn nerve!  He hadn't even bothered to ask if she was available, just casually assumed she'd fall in with his plans.  Well, she most certainly wasn't meeting Jack for lunch, and she made a mental note to avoid Valchera's like the plague for the next few weeks.

 

   She wheeled the cursor to the third message, and clicked.

 

   _From:    KManton@fbi.net_

_To:        DScully@fbi.net_

_Subject: Meeting._

_\-------------------------------------------------_

_Assistant Director Skinner has asked to see you at 10:30 this morning.  Please contact me immediately if you will be unavailable for this interview._

_Kimberley Manton_

_A.D.'s office._

 

   Scully glanced reflexively at the clock, but knew she had over an hour yet.  What could the AD want?  She hadn't seen him since the Bellefleur case, although she knew he'd been behind her being sent to Cleveland two weeks ago.  Maybe it was another of those 'special' cases, like Bellefleur.  Mulder had warned her that others tended to surface once in a while ....

 

   Then she smiled.  Mulder believed in aliens, for God's sake.  She thought about the dark, lanky, good-looking college lecturer-cum-part time freelance journalist for a moment.  They met up for coffee or lunch once in a while; Mulder claimed that he was on a self-imposed mission to broaden her mind, but Scully suspected it was simply because he missed his old job at the Bureau and wanted to talk to someone who spoke the same language.

 

   Well, if AD Skinner did want to hand her one of the so-called "X" files, she'd be able to ask Mulder's opinion of it.

 

xXx

 

   "Agent Scully, please take a seat." 

 

   Assistant Director Walter Skinner's voice embodied the term "gravelly".  He was a tall, muscular man, an ex-Marine in his early- or mid-forties, balding and wearing glasses, but was otherwise impressively fit and youthful; a man who gave a strong impression of energy held in check and complete control of his surroundings.  He was also rather good-looking, but Scully noticed this only in the abstract, having long ago schooled herself into an unawareness of such things in her male superiors.

 

   It was a trick some of her fellow female agents could have stood to learn, if half what she overheard in the washrooms was true.

 

   Skinner waited until she was seated before sitting down behind his desk and picking up a file; it was thick and vaguely familiar to Scully, which was hardly surprising, as it was her personnel file.

 

   "I've been reviewing your performance during the Cleveland case, Agent Scully," he said, without preamble.  He flipped a few pages over in the file, but wasn't really reading them.  "SAC Shinton was very impressed with your work, and his report was highly favourable."

 

   Scully murmured a few confused words of thanks, unsure what this was leading to, and Skinner looked at her over the top of his reading glasses. 

 

   "I've been looking over your work on the Bellefleur case again as well.  Considering the unusual circumstances, your performance was exemplary and produced a better result than was originally expected.  All in all, Agent Scully, and considering the rather - unfortunate - nature of your transfer out of Quantico, your record has so far been very good with Violent Crimes.  Agent Blevins speaks very highly of you, and your work has been consistently high quality."  Skinner closed the file and leaned back in his chair, fiddling with his fountain pen.  "It's been suggested that you might like to consider taking on a more challenging project, something which will make better use of your abilities as both a pathologist and an investigator."

 

   He paused for a few moments, considering, and Scully strove to look suitably interested, whilst wondering just who had done the "suggesting".

 

   "I'm aware that you are acquainted with a former agent named Fox Mulder," Skinner continued abruptly.  "Has he ever mentioned a project known as the X-files to you?"

 

   "Only in passing, Sir," Scully said carefully.  "I believe they have to do with unexplained phenomena."

 

   "In part," Skinner agreed, "but - well, you'll see.  Mulder worked on the X-files in the period leading up to his resignation, but since then they haven't been touched.  It's been suggested that you would be a good candidate to continue the work.  How do you feel about that?"

 

   There was only one possible response to such a question. 

 

"I'll give it my best shot, Sir," Scully said, doing her best to mask the melange of thoughts and emotions racing through her.

 

   "Good."  Skinner stood up, and so did she.  "You'll want to check out the office they're kept in and get started.  I suspect," he added dryly, "knowing the way Mulder worked, there'll be some tidying up to be done.  I'll require regular reports on your progress."

 

   It was a dismissal of sorts, and Scully took it as such.  As she went to the door, however, his voice halted her again.

 

   "Oh, and Agent Scully - you'll be reporting to me directly in future."

 

xXx

 

   The office was in the basement; she'd had to ask Kimberley, the AD's secretary, where to find it, and then retrieve the keys from Security, who'd been incredulous that anyone was going to work down there again.

 

   Their reactions didn't give Scully a warm, fuzzy feeling about the project, and nor did the poorly lit corridor leading to the room in question.  She stared around her at all the abandoned equipment from previous eras in the Hoover building, and wondered what she'd got herself into.

 

   She unlocked the door, noting the scratched and faded sign on it that said "Photocopier", and pushed it open warily. Darkness.  She fumbled around on the wall until she found a switch and pressed it.  The light that flickered on was nothing like as bright as the fluorescents up in the VCS offices, but was adequate to give her a good look at the room.

 

   It was bigger than it looked, but the piled steel shelves and filing cabinets around the walls, and lack of an adequate window to provide natural light, made it look dark and cramped.  Everything was swathed in plastic sheeting. 

 

   Scully hesitated, then stepped confidently forward and pulled the huge plastic cover off the desk, to reveal in-trays, out-trays, assorted rubbish and paperweights ... and a sturdy brass name-plate.  She smiled suddenly, and picked the latter up, running her fingers over the engraved letters.

 

   Special Agent Fox Mulder.

 

   She put it down again, feeling less like an outsider, and walked around the desk.  Her shoes crunched something on the floor; looking down, she saw a scattered mass of sunflower seed shells.  Looking up again, her eyes fell directly on a Unipart calendar, two years out of date, with an improbably busty Miss August staring back at her.  She smiled wryly.  Typical.

 

   She pulled up the chair, wincing at the squeal of the wheels, and began to turn over the contents of the two trays on the corner of the desk.  Most of the stuff was fit only for the wastepaper basket; ditto the contents of the drawers.  There was a computer on a table behind her which looked as if it had received some serious abuse in the past, and a poster on the wall opposite which had a picture of a so-called UFO with the legend "I Want To Believe" underneath.

 

   It was all very Mulder, right down to the faint scent of his cologne which still clung to the chair she sat on.  The latter kept distracting her ... much to her irritation when she realised.

 

   An hour later, Scully was cleaning out a percolator in the corner, in the hopes of making some real coffee, and wondering if the computer was still linked into the FBI network.

 

   Her desk upstairs had been forgotten.

 

xXx

 

   The rude clatter of something metallic hitting the formica table-top jerked Mulder out of his perusal of the Washington Post's sports section. 

 

   "What the - "  He looked up, and saw a pair of smiling blue eyes.  "Oh, hi!"  He tossed the paper to one side and picked up the brass name-plate which had been tossed on the table.  "Scully, where did you get this?"

 

   Scully dropped her bag into the corner of the cubicle and slid into the seat opposite him.  "Where do you think?" she smiled.

 

   "Last time I saw it, it had crawled under a pile of files to die."

 

   "In a certain basement office?"

 

   "That'd be the one."  Mulder suddenly registered what she'd said, and looked at her sharply.  "What were you doing in the basement?"

 

   "Cleaning up.  Can't you tell by the layer of dust on me?"  Scully grabbed the menu from where it was propped up by the salt and pepper shakers.  "God, I'm starving!  By the way, Mulder, you have filthy habits."

 

   "Have you been talking to my mother again?" he joked, but his eyes were fixed on her steadily.  "Come on, Scully, give - what were you doing in the basement?"

 

   "Like I said - cleaning."  She scanned the menu thoughtfully. "The vegetable lasagne sounds good ...."

 

   "Scully, if you don't start talking, I'm going to pin you to the floor and tickle you, right here in front of all your fellow agents."

 

   "The gossip network would love it, I'm sure."  Scully sighed and put the menu down.  "Okay, it's quite simple.  Skinner called me in this morning and said that I was to take over the X-files project."

 

   Mulder stared.  "You're kidding me, right?"

 

   "'Fraid not.  I spent half the morning sweeping up sunflower seed shells and persuading the computer to work.  From the looks of it, I'd say you dropped coffee on the keyboard the last time you used it - the right cursor key keeps sticking."

 

   A waitress approached, and there was a brief pause while they both ordered.  When she was gone again, Mulder shifted uneasily in his seat.  "Scully," he began uneasily, "are you sure you want to do this?"

 

   She stared at him for a moment, wondering at the sudden change in his attitude.  "You've spent the best part of the last three months trying to get me to believe in aliens," she pointed out, "and now you're saying I shouldn't get into this stuff?"

 

   "Talking you into going to a NICAP meeting is a far cry from proving - _officially_ proving - that the Government is covering up alien abductions," Mulder replied.  He did not look happy.  "I don't think you realise how risky this is."

 

   Scully peered at him, her brow furrowed.  "You know, just for a moment there I could have sworn it was my father sat opposite me."

 

   "Scully - "

 

   "Mulder, I'm a big girl, I can look after myself!  And you're talking like I had a choice in the matter."

 

   "You can refuse an assignment like this."

 

   "Not after already making a prejudicial transfer once in my career," she retorted sharply.  "Besides, what makes you think I want to refuse it?  At least it means I don't have to work with Tom Colton anymore."

 

   Mulder snorted in spite of himself.  He'd never met Colton, but Scully's descriptions were colourful enough to make him wish for a chance encounter, just to see if the guy really was as pushy as she said.

 

   "Anyway," Scully added, as the waitress hove into view with their orders, "from the looks of things, I'll be spending ninety percent of my time debunking the hoaxers."

 

   "It'll look good on your solve rate, but don't be too quick to consign them to the bin, Scully," he warned her.

 

   Scully's eyes narrowed.  "Mulder, I've been looking through some of the files and - please tell me you don't really believe in Bigfoot."

 

   Mulder grinned; they were back on common ground again.  "Show me the proof that it doesn't exist," he challenged her. 

 

   Scully opened her mouth - and shut it again.  She began to pick nonchalantly at her pasta. 

 

   "I had some great casts of its footprints somewhere in the office," he added, delighted with her reaction.

 

   "I know," she retorted.  "I'm using one of them as an umbrella stand.  And by the way, Mulder, I don't know what you did to the filing system, but it's going to take me months to sort it out.  How you ever found anything is beyond me."

 

   He shrugged, smiling.  "I have a good memory.  Speaking of which - "  He rummaged around in his coat pockets and pulled out a couple of packages.  "I got you this at the psychic faire."

 

   Scully smiled as she unwrapped it, unable to repress an inner chuckle.  "Mongolian cures for veruccas?" she asked, pulling out a nondescript muslin bag of what looked like fine gravel.

 

   "Close," he grinned.  "Ground dragons' teeth.  The woman who sold it to me swore it would bring you health, wealth and lasting happiness."

 

   Scully looked at the little bag dubiously.  "I'll take it in the spirit it was intended, then.  But I have to tell you, Mulder - I have this lovely bridge I'd like to sell you, with marvellous views of Brooklyn."

 

   He laughed, and handed her the second package.  "Sam bought you a present too."

 

   Scully's face creased into a broad smile.  "You took him with you?  How is he?"

 

   Mulder glowered.  "He's driving me nuts.  He found Mom's purse this morning and posted all her money into my PC's disk-drive.  Looks like I'm going to spend tonight trying to pick it out again with a pair of tweezers."

 

   Scully couldn't help it; she laughed helplessly.  "It could have been worse, Mulder," she managed, when she'd got her breath back a little.  "My nephew put a peanut butter sandwich in the VCR once, and no one knew until they tried to play a brand new copy of "Dances With Wolves"."

 

   He grinned in spite of himself.  "Well, I wouldn't have minded, but when I told one of the other lecturers this morning, all she could say was that he was "exploring his environment", and I shouldn't stop him doing things like that or he'd grow up repressed and resentful.  Which does nothing for how repressed and resentful _I_ feel at spending an evening fishing $10.26 out of my PC."

 

   "Well, he's not two yet, Mulder," Scully said reasonably, smiling.  "He doesn't understand."

 

   "Don't be too sure of that.  He knew enough to hide after he'd done it."

 

   The image this conjured up made Scully laugh again.  She began to carefully unwrap the second parcel, and was delighted to find a delicate little bracelet, made of a fine copper chain with tiny crescent moons and stars hanging from it.  "It's lovely!" she exclaimed, putting it on and then

twisting her wrist to watch the charms.  Seeing Mulder's smug smile, she couldn't resist prodding just a little, though.  "So Sam chose this, huh?"

 

   The smile didn't slip, but a tiny hint of a flush climbed Mulder's cheeks.  "Yeah, well ... he may not know much about PC's, but he's got good taste.  It's been painted with something so it won't tarnish."

 

   "That was going to be my next question."  Scully finished the last couple of bites of her lunch.  "So - any advice before I throw myself headlong into your filing system?"

 

   "Mind the wobbly wheel on the chair?" he offered, grinning.  He took another forkful of his own meal, and looked at his plate for a moment.  The grin slipped.  "Just - be careful, Scully.  And - "

 

   She raised a brow questioningly, and he shrugged, his smile a little uncomfortable. 

 

   "Well, you know where to find me."

 

   "Mulder, you can have any newsworthy stories I dig up, just so long as you keep my name out of them," she replied with a smile, deliberately misunderstanding him.

 

   He knew what was really being said, though.  She'd tell him what was going on, and involve him if she possibly could.  A relieved smile crossed his face.

 

   Mulder missed his old job badly.  Being a lecturer and part-time journalist, while being steady and more reliable work for a single father of an eighteen-month-old son, did not provide the excitement levels he thrived on.

 

   Scully picked up her bag.  "Look, I've got to go.  I'll give you a call if anything interesting comes up.  In the meantime ... give Sam a big hug and kiss for me."

 

   A devilish glint entered Mulder's eye.  "Oooh, Scully, I don't know if I'll be able to replicate that accurately without first-hand knowledge."

 

   Scully gave him a look, and patted his cheek as she passed him.  "In your dreams, Mulder, in your dreams."

 

   He twisted in his seat to watch her as she walked out of the door, and smiled wistfully.  "Scully, if only you knew."

 

xXx

 

   Two days later, Scully had beaten the filing system into submission and had begun the painstaking job of working her way through it, trying to find a case worth re-opening and working on.  Despite the comments by AD Skinner, she wasn't entirely sure exactly how she was to proceed - whether he was going to actually assign her cases, or if she was supposed to find her own.  For the time being, she was working on the latter assumption, guessing that a good portion of what she did would be sifting through old case files and seeing if they could be closed on technical grounds, details that had been overlooked in previous investigations.

 

   Despite that decision, it still wasn't easy to decide where to start.  She suspected beginning at 'A' and working her way through would not be particularly helpful; nor would shutting her eyes and opening a file drawer at random.  In the end, she chose a promising subject - poltergeists - and dragged all the files out on the subject.  There were a lot, especially when she finally worked out Mulder's weird system of cross-referencing.

 

   She was sat in the middle of the floor with them piled around her, when there was a knock on the door.

 

   It was Tom Colton, and he was looking around him with a wrinkled nose.  "So this is where they've buried you.  Who did you tick off to get _this_ detail, Dana?"

 

   There were a lot of possible answers to that, but Scully chose the diplomatic one, aware that there was little point in aggravating him unnecessarily.  "I've no idea.  How can I help you, Tom?"

 

   But Colton wasn't ready to talk business yet.  "Someone told me this was Spooky Mulder's old office.  That true?"

 

   Scully's ears pricked up in spite of herself.  " _Spooky_ Mulder?"

 

   "Yeah.  The guy was some kind of nut - believed in aliens and things that go bump in the night.  He got thrown out of the Bureau a couple of years ago."

 

   Scully couldn't tell from Colton's expression or tone whether this was genuinely what he'd heard, or whether he was just fishing to find out what she knew, but she couldn't let it pass without trying to set the record straight.  "That's not what I heard," she said evenly, as she picked up a small stack

of files and deposited them on the desk.

 

   "Oh?"

 

   "I heard he resigned from the Bureau to look after his son, after his wife left him."

 

   "Really."  The tone was just a little too casual.  "Well, I heard you knew him."

 

   "Really?"  Scully recovered another pile of files from the floor, and feigned disinterest.  "Says who?"

 

   "Says Jack Willis."

 

   Scully stiffened slightly. 

 

   "He says you're pretty cosy with Mulder - you had lunch with him the other day at Rosenthal's."  Colton came up behind her and took hold of her left wrist, examining the delicate copper bracelet with apparent interest.

 

_Damn!  How did Jack find out about that?_   Scully pulled her hand away and turned, leaning back against the edge of the desk.  "Okay, Tom, what's your point?"

 

   He smiled amiably at her.  "Nothing!  I just thought you could lay the rumours to rest about him."

 

   _Bullshit!_ she thought sourly.  "I don't think he'd thank me if I tried, and besides, he's just a friend.  Is that all you came down here for?  To do Jack's dirty work for him?"

 

   But she knew as soon as she said it that it wasn't true.  Tom Colton never did anyone's dirty work unless it was to his own advantage; and there was no advantage to be had in annoying Dana Scully.  Besides, Jack did his own dirty work.  Scully mentally resigned herself to another round of e-mails and answerphone messages from him.

 

   "Actually," Colton replied quickly, "I came down here to see if you were too busy to help out with a case of mine."

 

   Scully raised a brow, and glanced at her files.  "Well I'm busy, but it's nothing that can't rot for another couple of years.  What is it?"

 

   "Baltimore PD have asked for our help.  They've had three murders, the first of which happened six weeks ago.  The victims have no known connection to each other."

 

   Scully's interest was caught almost immediately.  "So what's the pattern?"

 

   "The killer's point of entry."  Colton paused, then added, "Or lack of it, rather.  The first victim was killed in her ten-foot-by-twelve-foot college dorm.  The windows were locked, and the door bolted and chained from the inside.  The latest killing occurred in a high security office block.  There was nothing on the security cameras; the guy was working late, and had locked his office from the inside.  No one was seen entering or leaving."

 

   "So could they just be suicides?" Scully asked reasonably.

 

   But Colton shook his head - and to her surprise, he actually seemed to pale slightly, although that could just have been an effect of the weak fluorescent light in the office.  "The victims' livers were removed," he said, and offered her a stack of photos he'd been holding all along.

 

   Scully's eyes widened as she looked through them.  "My God ... what tools did this guy use?  They look as if - "

 

   "He used bare hands," Colton finished for her.  "That's the conclusion we've come to, anyway - there's no evidence of any other tool being used."

 

   She took a last look at the pictures and handed them back.  "So what do you want me to do?"

 

   Colton looked slightly uncomfortable, although he tried to hide it.  "Since you've taken on Spooky's mantle, I thought you could maybe come down to the crime scene - take a look - check

over the case histories maybe."

 

   Scully gave him a thoughtful look.  "I've only been working down here a few days, Tom.  It's hardly my area of expertise yet."

 

   "Yeah, well ...."

 

   There was a pause in which he looked anywhere but at her.  Finally, Scully asked carefully, "Do you want me to ask Mulder if he can help out at all?"

 

   Colton twitched irritably.  "Look, let's not get carried away here," he warned her.  "I'm going to solve this case.  But ... if Mulder wants to do you a favour - "  Scully did her best to ignore the thinly veiled insinuation in this, " - and knows any background information which might help, then great."

 

   He paused, examining a plaster cast of a footprint which was holding up a row of books on a shelf.  "If I can solve this case, I'll get my boost up the ladder," he said abruptly.

 

   _At last, we come to the nitty gritty,_ Scully thought wryly.

 

   He turned to face her.  "And if you help me out, Dana ...."  His voice trailed off suggestively, and she tilted her head to one side questioningly.

 

   "Maybe you won't have to be Mrs. Spooky anymore," he shrugged.

 

   When he was gone Scully slumped down in her chair, uncaring of the slight list the wobbly wheel gave it, and stared pensively at the "I Want To Believe" poster opposite. 

 

   _What if I want to be 'Mrs. Spooky'?_

 

xXx

 

   What struck Scully first about George Usher's office was how neat it appeared; the murderer of the businessman was remarkably tidy, given the method of the killing.  In the few minutes she had to herself at the crime scene before Colton arrived, she studied the room, correlating the visual evidence with the conclusions of the examining pathologist.

 

   Security in the high-rise office block was impressively tight, and there had been no security camera evidence of an intruder.  Usher had arrived late, at around 7.30pm after a meeting, and after getting himself a drink from the machine just down the corridor, had locked himself inside his office and telephoned his wife to let her know he would be late home.  During that brief absence from the room, the camera opposite the door had recorded no signs of anyone else entering or leaving. 

 

   The camera had, however, recorded a violent impact against the inside of the door some ten minutes after Usher had locked himself in there.  Scully looked at the back of the door and noted a decided dent in the flimsy plywood, which would appear to be the cause of a fractured right humerous bone in the deceased and bruising along the right side of the face.  Usher had been flung against the door during a struggle ... if there had been much of a struggle which, judging by the condition of the office, Scully doubted.

 

   The rest of the visible evidence comprised a large patch of blood on the carpet at the side of the huge pine desk.  Given the wound left after the attacker had removed the liver, the quantity of blood was hardly surprising.

 

   "Dana, hi."  Colton arrived in a rush, anxious (Scully suspected) to lay claim to his case before she could.  "Have you taken a look around?  What do you think?"

 

   "I think your killer knew what he was doing," she replied diplomatically.  She looked around her thoughtfully.  "The windows can't be opened and the door was locked from the inside.  Has there been any progress on the point of entry?"

 

   "None," Colton admitted gloomily, "just like the other two crime scenes."

 

   Scully's eyes wandered over the room again, searching every corner for some hint or clue.  The only other opening into the room beside the door, however, was an air conditioning vent covered by a fine grille.  And that was barely a foot square - impossibly small to permit entrance to an attacker capable of taking out the six foot tall and heavily built George Usher.

 

   Nevertheless ....  Scully couldn't help but remember her training at the Academy.  She herself was barely five foot two and lightly built, but had succeeded in making fools of men twice her size during unarmed combat lessons.  The memory made her smile inwardly, but she looked again at the vent thoughtfully.  It _was_ the only other opening in the room.

 

   And in her head, Fox Mulder's voice was whispering that she should take nothing at face value.

 

   It wouldn't hurt to look.

 

   Tom Colton thought otherwise, when he saw her walk over to the vent and look up at it.  "Dana, you can't be serious!  That opening's barely a foot square - "

 

   "You're probably right," Scully agreed absently, but her eye had been caught by something glinting in the pile of the carpet directly below the vent.

 

   To her relief, Colton was called away then by one of the local police officers.  She quickly fished a thin surgical glove out of her pocket, and crouched down to take a closer look.  There was a faint scattering of what looked like iron filings on the surface of the carpet.  Scully carefully pressed a finger to one of them to pick it up, and examined it more closely.

 

   It was more like a tiny twisted shred of metal.  Scully looked up again at the vent.  The grille was screwed down at each corner, and it seemed likely that tightly-fitting screws being turned could have produced the filings.

 

   Why would Usher have been unscrewing the vent cover?  And with what?  There was no sign anywhere of a screwdriver or other tool that could have been used for that purpose.  _Had_ it been Usher at all?

 

   Perhaps ....  Scully looked around, and found the finger- printing kit left on a chair by the forensics team while they searched the other offices on the floor.  Then she hesitated.

 

   Colton was right, after all - no one could get through this air conditioning vent.

 

   But Mulder's voice in her head pointed out that there was still the mystery of the metal filings.  Someone had touched the vent and might have left prints.  If it was Usher, there was the question of why he had done so.  If it wasn't Usher ....

 

   Scully grabbed the brush and powder from the kit.  She had to stand on tiptoe to reach the edge of the grille, but when she had carefully dusted all around it, the effort was rewarded.

 

   Scully's eyes widened in satisfaction as a single print was revealed by the fine black powder ... only to become round with astonishment a second later when the shape of the print became clear.

 

   It was a finger-print all right.  But Scully doubted if George Usher had made it.

 

xXx

 

   "Hi Bill!"

 

   The duty officer, manning the security desk at the J. Edgar Hoover Building's main entrance, froze at the breezy greeting.  _That_ voice he hadn't heard in nearly two years.  He hadn't expected to ever hear it again after it's owner had, according to rumour, been drummed out of the Bureau in disgrace.

 

   It couldn't be.  He looked up warily.

 

   It was.

 

   The smooth, blandly amiable face of Fox Mulder beamed back at him happily.  But it wasn't the smile that bothered Bill.  It was the lurking twinkle in the shrewd hazel eyes.

 

   Mulder leaned on the desk with folded arms, smiling sweetly at the guard's sour expression.  "Got a pass for me?"

 

   "And why would I have a pass for you, Age - " Bill caught himself up sharply, and chomped on the inside of his lip for a couple of seconds irritably.  "Sir," he finished finally, with sullen emphasis.

 

   "Because I'm here to see someone," Mulder pointed out helpfully.

 

   Bill restrained himself.  "And who would that someone be?  Sir."

 

   "Special Agent Dana Scully."

 

   Of course.  Bill had been on duty when Agent Scully had collected the keys to the basement office less than a week ago.  Rumour said (Bill listened to rumours, because a good member of Security needed to be up to date with events in the Bureau) that Agent Scully had taken over _former_ Agent Mulder's job.

 

   The Spooky Patrol, as it was casually known around the Hoover building.

 

   Bill thought it was a pity - she had always seemed like such a nice young woman.  "Do you have an appointment?" he demanded disapprovingly.

 

   Mulder's brows rose and his face assumed a well-feigned "who, me?" look of hurt.  "Of course."

 

   The guard dragged out the visitors' book from under the counter, and slapped it and a pen in front of the former agent.  "Sign in," he snapped.  "I'll let Agent Scully know you're here."

 

   The implication was clear: pass or no pass, Fox Mulder was not going to be allowed to roam the Hoover Building unescorted.

 

   Mulder accepted this with unruffled equanimity, and signed the book with a flourish.  Then he pocketed the pen, and turned away casually to watch the milling crowd of tourists waiting for a guide to arrive.

 

   Bill gritted his teeth and tapped Mulder on the shoulder, holding out a hand menacingly when the younger man turned with raised brows.  "My pen."

 

   "Oh, did I - ?"  Mulder fished in his pocket, feigned surprise when he found the pen there, and handed it back.  "I'm so forgetful," he smiled.

 

   Since it had been common knowledge in the Bureau that Spooky Mulder had a photographic memory, the only possible reply to this was a searing glare and retreat.  Mulder grinned at Bill and returned to his people-watching.

 

   "Mulder, what are you doing?" a voice asked, and Scully appeared in his line of vision, one auburn brow raised admonishingly.

 

   Mulder permitted himself a quick five-second appreciation of her tailored burgundy suit with two regulation inches of knee appearing from the hem of her skirt.  "Waiting for you," he replied, smiling and ignoring the stern note in her voice.

 

   Scully gave him a Look, and leaned over the Security desk.  "Do you have a visitor pass, Bill?"

 

   Bill grudgingly handed one over, and Mulder made a show of pinning it to the lapel of his jacket.

 

   "Come on," Scully sighed, and tried not to notice as he waved a coy goodbye to Bill.  She led him over to the elevators and punched the "call" button.  "Mulder, what _were_ you doing?"

 

   He blinked at her innocently.  "Huh?"

 

   "What is it with you and Bill?"

 

   "Oh - nothing.  Bill and I go way back."

 

   "I noticed," she commented dryly.  "How to win friends and influence people ...." 

 

   The elevator doors opened and she pushed him inside.  "Come on, I've got something to show you."

 

   "I gathered that much from your message."  Mulder eyed her curiously as the doors shut and she pressed the basement button.  "What's so urgent?"

 

   Scully stalled, unwilling to talk about the case in the lift.  "Was it inconvenient for you?"

 

   "No, but - "

 

   The lift stopped, and the doors opened on a group of chattering agents from Serious Fraud.  They piled into the elevator car and as the doors shut, the temperature seemed to drop by several degrees.  There was a deafening silence.

 

   "What floor?" Scully asked, and her words seemed to drop to her feet dead as she said them.  She looked around, astonished, and realised that everyone else was staring at Mulder.

 

   Mulder himself had suddenly discovered an acute fascination for the floor.

 

   The hostility was tangible, and Scully felt a sudden surge of anger.  "What floor?" she snapped sharply.

 

   "Lower ground two," one agent said finally.

 

   Scully punched the button viciously and proceeded to stare that agent in the eye icily until the doors opened again and the lift disgorged the entire group.  Even so, she heard someone whistling the theme to "The Twilight Zone" as the doors closed again behind them.

 

   There was an uncomfortable silence as the lift proceeded on to the basement.

 

   "Mulder - " she began finally.

 

   He looked up and gave her a wry little smile that did unnerving things to Scully's insides.  "Nice to know I'm still news around here," he observed.

 

   There wasn't much she could say to that.

 

xXx

 

   For Mulder, stepping back into the basement was a surreal experience.  It didn't feel like nearly two years since he'd left.

 

   There were still piles of old office equipment littering the corridor - old metal shelves, chairs, desks stacked one on another, an old computer monitor or two - and the tired old fluorescent strip-light on the ceiling still fizzed and flickered a little, as if it was about to give up the ghost.  The label on the door to the office still said "Photocopier" in faded letters.  And the air-conditioning still didn't work.

 

   The office had changed a little inside, though.  His desk, the chair with the wobbly wheel, and the metal shelves and filing cabinets, were all still in their places, as were all his weird posters and pictures on the pin board.  But Scully had already made an impact of her own; there was a much better angle-poise lamp on one side, the computer looked - well - as though the IT technicians had finally taken the time to come and give it an overhaul, and he could actually see the blotter and trays on the desk.  His old Unipart calendar was gone, to be replaced by a very functional-looking pharmaceuticals one, and the perennially-dying Swiss Cheese Plant which was balanced on one of the filing cabinets had obviously been given a stiff dose of something it liked, because it was looking unfeasibly perky.

 

   Although how it had survived this long anyway was an X-file in itself.

 

   Mulder felt uncomfortably like an intruder.  Coming here hadn't been such a good idea, after all.  "You've cleaned," he said to her accusingly, to cover his discomfort.  "Don't you realise the only thing that holds this part of the building up is the dust?"

 

   Scully raised a brow at him, unimpressed.  "If you mean I got rid of the fine layer of seed shells coating everything, then you're right," she told him calmly.  "I emptied your drawers too."

 

   Mulder gave her a sharp look - her tone had an odd note in it.  "I don't recall leaving anything behind - "

 

   "Not even in the bottom drawer?  There were some videos in there ...."

 

   It was hard to tell in the chancy lighting, but Scully was convinced she could detect a slight flush on his face.  His tone remained casual though.  "Any videos you found in that drawer aren't mine."

 

   "Good.  Because I've put them in that big box of rubbish over there, along with the calendar and magazines which probably aren't yours either."

 

   Scully gave him a look of mingled amusement and superiority, and went to the desk, grabbing the case file and an assorted pile of materials on top of it.  "Did you get the case details I sent you?"

 

   "Yeah.  Did you say three murders so far?"

 

   "That's right - no obvious point of entry in any of them."  Scully put the file and other stuff on top of a light-table in the corner and switched it on.  "The forensic team supposedly didn't come up with anything when they went over the crime scenes, but I found this print in the last victim's office."

 

   She produced a photographic slide and put it on the table.  The dark image of a strangely elongated and attenuated fingerprint showed up starkly, and she silently handed Mulder a magnifying glass so he could take a closer look.

 

   "Where did you find it exactly?" he asked, fascinated.

 

   "On an air-conditioning vent cover, about five feet off the floor.  The team hadn't looked at it because it was barely a foot square."

 

   "And what made _you_ look at it, Dr. Scully?"

 

   Silence.

 

   Mulder paused in his intense scrutiny of the slide and grinned up at her.  "Please don't say I'm rubbing off on you at last - "

 

   "Can I plead the Fifth?" she returned blandly.

 

   "What does the good Agent Colton think of this?"

 

   "Nothing much.  He thinks it must be a smeared print, probably left by a workman recently."

 

   "Really," Mulder drawled, "and what does he think of you finding it?"

 

   "That I'm shaping up as a worthy Mrs. Spooky."

 

   Mulder glanced up at her sharply, no longer amused.  "I'd avoid a reputation of that kind like the plague, Scully," he observed rather dryly.  "The last Mrs. Spooky wasn't someone to model yourself on."

 

   For some reason, Scully hadn't expected quite that reply - she'd expected some sort of leering come-back from him.  Then she scolded herself for being self-obsessed.  Given Mulder's past, and the former Mrs. Fox Mulder's transgressions in just about every conceivable area, it was hardly surprising he should put that particular interpretation on Colton's sobriquet.

 

   Perhaps it was just as well.  After all, did she really want Mulder to know that Colton thought they were having an affair?

 

   "I've got to admit, that's the first time I've heard that particular nickname in connection with you," she commented.

 

   "Well, you've led a sheltered life up until now."  Mulder's tone was slightly sour.  "Get used to it, Scully - if "Spooky" is the worst they call you, you'll be getting off lightly."  He straightened up and put the magnifying glass to one side.  "I've seen something like this before," he told her abruptly, and went to the filing cabinets.

 

   Scully waited patiently for the explosion, which came almost a minute later. 

 

   "Scully!  What have you done to the filing system?"

 

_At least he didn't call it 'his' filing system,_ she thought philosophically.  "What are you looking for?"

 

   "The two files covering the previous murders."  Mulder slammed a drawer shut, frustrated.

 

   Scully gave him a perplexed look.  "Colton has all the files on this case."

 

   "Not the current three murders," he replied impatiently, "the other ten."

 

   " _Ten?_ "  Scully was stunned.  "Tom didn't say anything about ten other murders - what are you talking about?"

 

   "He probably doesn't even know about them," Mulder admitted, leaning back against the file cabinet.  He pointed to the slide still lying on the light table.  "Prints like that one were lifted from five crime scenes in 1963.  Same MO - no discernable point of entry, and the liver was removed from each of the victims.  The killer was never caught."

 

   "You said ten," she reminded him, and he nodded.

 

   "Five identical murders were committed in 1933, with the same prints being found again.  All in the Baltimore area.  When the killer wasn't caught in both cases, they were buried in the X-files, where I found them a couple of years ago.  In fact, there was at least one similar crime committed in 1903 on record, but fingerprinting hadn't come into its own then, so evidence was thin on the ground.  Five murders every thirty years."  He looked gravely at her.  "That's three murders down, Scully - two to go."

 

   There was a pause as Scully struggled to assimilate this information.  Then: "So you're saying these are copycat crimes."

 

   Mulder gave her an old-fashioned look.  "What's the first thing we both learned at the Academy?  Every fingerprint is unique.  All eleven prints here are identical - this is the same killer."

 

   "I have a meeting with Colton and the Violent Crimes team assigned to this in ten minutes," she said dryly.  "Are you suggesting I should tell them that these crimes were committed by an alien?"

 

   "Of course not," he replied, amused.  "I find no evidence of alien involvement."

 

   Scully glowered.  "So, what - that this is the work of a hundred-year-old serial killer, capable of overpowering a healthy six-foot businessman?"

 

   "And he should stick out in a crowd, with ten-inch fingers."

 

   She slapped the surface of the light table in frustration.  "Do you think this is some kind of joke - "

 

   "No," Mulder replied gently.  "The X-files are about unexplained phenomena, Scully, things that don't necessarily have a rational or scientific explanation.  I haven't met Agent Colton, but based on what you've told me, do you honestly think he can handle the unconventional?"

 

   Scully folded her arms and looked at the floor for a moment.  "Bottom line, Mulder," she said quietly, "this is Colton's case."

 

   "Your case file - if I can find it now you've revolutionised the system - was first opened in 1903," he pointed out.  "That gives you jurisdiction.  But to make it easier on the touchy Agent Colton, why don't you leave him to his investigation, and conduct your own?"

 

   "I have a meeting to go to," Scully said, avoiding the question.  "Is it safe for me to leave you down here on your own while I'm gone?  I shouldn't be more than half an hour or so."

 

   Mulder knew when to fight and when to back down, and judging by the look on Scully's face this was one of the latter occasions.  He grinned at her good-naturedly.  "Well, I don't make any promises about the file cabinets, but ...."

 

   When she'd gathered up her materials and gone, he went to the cabinets and began rooting around for the two case-files he'd told her about.  Perhaps if she saw the evidence, she'd think about it a little more ....  Once he'd worked out her system, it was a piece of cake finding them.  Mulder dumped the files on her desk and began looking around for something to mark them with, a highlighter pen or even some sticky Post-It notes.  Scully's preternatural tidiness extended to the surface of her desk, though; there wasn't even a paperclip in sight.  He pulled open the top drawer.

 

   No pens, paperclips or Post-It pads, but a small stack of personal bits and pieces whose very untidiness told him that she'd dumped them there when she moved offices and hadn't had the time to sort them out.

 

   Mulder paused.  

 

   Like any good investigator, he'd been born with more than his fair share of curiosity, a desire to know that bordered on nosiness.  There was no question where his son Sam came by his enquiring mind.  But that aside, Mulder had noticed a while ago that while he had told Scully quite a bit about himself, for one reason or another, and those being things that were often quite personal, he still knew very little about her.

 

   Her father was a retired naval captain; her mother, to use an old-fashioned and politically-incorrect term, a housewife.  She had two brothers and a sister.  Scully herself had joined the FBI Academy straight out of medical school, to the apparent dismay of both parents, and she'd taught at Quantico until circumstances - according to her, in the form of a falling-out with a colleague - had forced her to make a prejudicial transfer.

 

   And that was about the sum total of his knowledge - or at least, it was as far as she had told him.  Mulder actually now knew more than he had a week ago, although he suspected Scully herself would be mortified if she knew about a certain ... informative encounter he'd had after she left him at Rosenthal's three days ago.

 

   And Mulder, being both human and curious, wouldn't mind knowing if what he'd learned from that encounter was borne out in any way by Scully's personal belongings.  To do him justice, he did struggle against the impulse for a moment or two.  But then curiosity won out.

 

   It was mostly photographs, a handful of which were in frames.  The first was a rather formal, posed picture of a distinguished older man in naval uniform and a charming older lady with dark hair.  Mulder would have known this to be Scully's parents without being told; aside from the man's uniform, there was a marked facial resemblance between Scully and her mother.  Another picture showed Scully stood beside a Christmas tree with two younger men, one also in a naval uniform and the other with unmistakable red hair.  A third showed her with another red-headed woman, slightly taller and with a more flamboyant dress style.  These were presumably her brothers and sister.

 

   The next one was a group photograph of her Academy class, and the one after that, bigger and framed rather handsomely, her Academy graduation picture.  Mulder smiled a little as he examined those, then put them aside. 

 

   The next half-dozen or so were, unfortunately, what he had half been expecting to find.  Various pictures of Scully with another agent Mulder knew slightly from his time in Violent Crimes, an older man called Jack Willis.  The same man who had accosted Mulder in Rosenthal's three days ago.

 

   Mulder laid all the photos down on the desk top carefully, and thought about this.  Scully had mentioned falling out with an instructor at the Academy once or twice, but although he had never called her on those facts - which she was obviously reluctant to talk about - he knew better than anyone that a simple "falling out" would not in itself be adequate reason to transfer out of a section of the Bureau.  If, however, she had had a relationship with an instructor at the Academy which had turned sour, then any resultant transfer would indeed be prejudicial.  Personal involvement with a colleague you worked closely with was professional misconduct in itself.

 

   Jack Willis had been injured in the line of duty while Mulder was still with Violent Crimes, and had been offered a job as an instructor at Quantico.

 

   Mulder abruptly scooped up the photos and pushed them back into the drawer.  _They say listeners never hear any good of themselves,_ he thought guiltily.  _Snoops probably never find anything to their own benefit, either._   He shut the drawer decisively and opened the one underneath, intent on finding a pen.

 

   Apparently the Imp of the Perverse hadn't finished with him yet, though.  The middle drawer was a mad tangle of pens, pencils, message pads, rubber bands and assorted other detritus which had apparently been tipped in there in a hurry and had yet to be sorted out.  Mulder rummaged around, searching for a highlighter pen - there had to be a highlighter pen in there somewhere - and instead pulled out a small, velvet-covered box.

 

   He didn't need to open it.  He knew what was in there.

 

   He opened it anyway.

 

   And shut it again with a snap of the spring-fastened lid, shoving it back into the depths of the drawer grimly.  _At least she's not wearing it,_ he thought, trying to convince himself that this was a good sign.  _But why has she still got it at all?_ a traitorous part of his mind whispered.

 

   "Looking for something?" a dry voice enquired from the doorway.

 

   The highlighter pen finally surfaced from the murk, and Mulder fished it out.  "Just a pen," he replied, shutting the drawer.

 

   And he looked up to meet the gaze of Assistant Director Skinner.

 

xXx

 

   When Scully returned to her office three quarters of an hour later, there was no sign of Mulder.  On her desk were two files, and a brief note. 

 

_I had to go.  Let me know what happens with the case._

_M._

 

xXx

 

   Two days later, Scully was on stakeout with the rest of the Violent Crimes team assigned to catching George Usher's killer.  Based on a profile she had written - and which Colton had taken a large part of the credit for - they were waiting in the underground parking lot of Usher's office block to see if the killer would, as she had predicted, return to the scene of the crime to recreate the emotional high of the killing.

 

   Scully's feelings on these events were mixed.  She was not feeling charitable towards Tom Colton right now, not just because of the business over her profile, but because of his proprietary and somewhat condescending attitude toward her.  He wanted her help: fine, she was prepared to extend it.  He had offered to help her out in return: she hadn't decided yet if she wanted the help he was offering, but she was willing to go along with the idea for now.  What she didn't need were his wisecracks about the X-files, or the snide remarks he occasionally dropped which the other members of the team apparently felt free to join in with.

 

   Like Agent Fuller at the meeting the other day.  "I know you're assigned to another area," he'd said, "but if you don't mind some overtime, you're welcome to join us.  That is, if you don't mind working in an area that's a little more down-to-earth."

 

   It wasn't so much the comment, as the sneer it had been said with, and the snickers from the rest of the agents.

 

   And Scully was getting more than a little tired of Colton's continual jabs about Mulder.  She was beginning to rethink her original assumption that he hadn't been Jack's errand boy earlier in the week.  No less than twelve messages on her answerphone from Jack in the last four days hadn't helped; the content of some convinced her that Tom must have been talking.

 

   She hadn't heard from Mulder since he'd left her office the other day, either.  She'd e-mailed him to let him know what was going on, but hadn't received a reply.

 

   _Life,_ she thought gloomily, _was a lot simpler back at Med School.  At least all I had to worry about there was passing my exams._

 

   Her radio suddenly let out a soft crackle of static.  "Position Ten, this is a station check."

 

   Scully grabbed it quickly.  "Position Ten, I copy."  She put it back on the dashboard and peered out into the gloomy lighting of the parking lot.  Nothing moved.  She wasn't sure whether to be glad or disappointed.

 

   Mulder's two files kept floating in front of her mind.  He had highlighted a number of points for her to look at, including the fingerprint analyses and another detail which had initially escaped her, the fact that the killer took a trophy from each crime scene.  Examination of Colton's files had shown that an article had indeed been lifted from each victim's belongings; and the fingerprints were all identical to the one from Usher's office.

 

   The sudden sound of footsteps roused Scully from her confused reverie.  She leaned forward in the diver's seat and peered out into the garage.

 

   Nothing.

 

   All the same ....  She drew her gun from its holster, picked up a flashlight from the seat beside her, and quietly got out of the car to look.

 

   Silence.  She looked around, aimed her flashlight into some of the gloomier corners, but saw nothing. 

 

   Then she heard it again; quick purposeful footsteps coming in her direction.  Scully put the flashlight down and pressed her back against the wall, gun at the ready.  The footsteps got closer ... closer ....  She rounded the corner fast, her gun aimed directly -

 

   - at Mulder's chest.  He raised his hands reflexively, a bag of sunflower seeds still clasped in the right, but didn't look in the slightest bit fazed.  Scully jerked the gun away hastily, and half-turned away for a second, taking a couple of quick, steadying breaths before turning back to fix him with an angry glare.

 

   "You wouldn't shoot an unarmed man, would you, Copper?"

 

   "Mulder, what the hell are you doing here?" she demanded sharply, in no way pleased to see him.

 

   "He's not coming back here," Mulder told her placidly, ignoring her question.

 

   "What?"

 

   "The killer - he's not coming back.  The stakeout's pointless, Scully.  He gets his thrill from the challenge of a seemingly impossible entry.  Now he's conquered this building, he'll move on - if you'd read the notes I left for you, you'd have come to the same conclusion."

 

   Scully wondered if shooting Mulder right now would be considered justifiable homicide.  "Mulder, you are jeopardising my stakeout," she snapped.  "And in any case, you shouldn't be here."

 

   "Seeds?"

 

   She ignored him, holstering her gun and retrieving the flashlight before returning to her car.

 

   "You're wasting your time," he called after her.  "I'm going home."  He turned on his heel and began to walk back through the abandoned parking lot.

 

   Mulder wasn't exactly sure why he'd come down here.  Aside from the risk of being picked up by the VCS team, he'd vowed to stay away from Scully for a while, judging the situation between them to be too complicated; but her e-mail, enclosing both a copy of her profile and details of the stakeout, had proven too tempting.  He had to be there, to know first-hand what happened, even though he was certain nothing would come of it.

 

   So it came a something of a surprise when, as he was passing a fenced off area of the basement containing the air conditioning pumps, he heard several sharp clangs and thumps coming from somewhere inside the large pipes the circulating air was pumped through.  For several seconds he paused, staring at the pipes and telling himself that it was just random mechanical noise.  Then there was a particularly loud bang, and Mulder's eyes widened in disbelief as something dented the metal air conditioning shaft from the inside.

 

   Shock held him for barely a second; then he was off, running through the parking lot.

 

   "Scully!  Call for back-up and get over here!"

 

xXx

 

   Watching the oddly youthful, if grimy, man emerge from the air conditioning vent backwards was an eerie feeling, Mulder reflected as he concentrated on keeping out of the FBI agents' way.  Even more peculiar for him were the feelings running through him as he watched Scully, Colton and company bustling about and reading the suspect his rights, but having no part of the activity.

 

   It felt lonely.

 

   Not that he hadn't often felt quite lonely even when he was working for the Bureau and supposedly part of the team, but this was worse; not just the feeling of being an outsider, but knowing that he actually _was_.

 

   _Get a grip!_ he thought acidly, catching himself in the act of self pity as he watched the innocuous-looking vent crawler being taken away.  Then he saw Scully approaching, and straightened up.

 

   For a moment they stared at each other, Scully at least being unable to think of something to say.  Then Mulder spoke up, driven by a need to have the first word if not the last. 

 

   "You were right."

 

   It was the nearest he would get to saying he was wrong, and it had the additional benefit of acknowledging that her work was valid on its own merits, without any help from him.  Mulder felt pleased with himself for having successfully conveyed that without any sour undertones.

 

   Scully tried to smile, but it wasn't a total success.  She didn't know why, but she felt almost guilty.  "Will you come down to the precinct while we question him?"

 

   Mulder gave her a wry look.  "You think Colton's going to want me there?"

 

   "I thought you might want to know what happens - they're going to do a polygraph."

 

   "Not tonight - they won't get that fixed up until tomorrow at the earliest," he pointed out logically.

 

   "So come down then," she persisted.  "Take a look over the interview transcripts - you might be able to suggest something we've missed."

 

   He doubted it, but the look on her face melted his resolve.  "Okay.  Let me know what time they schedule it for, and I'll see if I can't shift classes."

 

xXx

 

   When Mulder arrived at the police precinct, he had about five minutes to speak to Scully before she was whisked away by Colton and Agent Fuller.

 

   "I'm sorry," she told him tensely.  "I tried, but Fuller and Colton won't hear of you being in on the polygraph."

 

   Mulder grinned at her.  "Did you honestly expect anything else?"

 

   Scully sighed.  "No, I guess not.  Did you get a chance to look at the interview transcript?"

 

   "Yeah, but don't say that too loud - Colton could drag you in front of the AD for spilling that to me."

 

   "I'd like to see Skinner's face," she retorted. 

 

   _No, you wouldn't,_ Mulder thought wryly, still smarting from his encounter with Skinner a few days ago, but he said nothing.

 

   "Any ideas before I go?" she asked him.  "You'll stay, won't you?"

 

   "Seems like a reasonable idea now I'm here.  What sort of questions are you asking him?"

 

   Scully handed him a sheet of paper, and he scanned it quickly.  Then he whipped a retractable pencil out of his pocket and leaned the paper on the wall while he added a couple more.  "See what happens with these."

 

   Scully looked.  And blinked, getting a sinking feeling in her stomach.  "Mulder, you've got to be kidding."

 

   He smiled.  "Honestly.  If Colton gets antsy, you can always say they're control questions."

 

   Someone called Scully's name then, and she gave his arm a quick squeeze.  "Stay out of trouble, Mulder, and I'll see you in a minute."

 

   "Me, trouble?"  Mulder watched her go with a smile, then looked around for something to do.  His eye fell on a young female officer working at the Enquiries desk.  Maybe ....

 

xXx

 

   Twenty minutes later the suspect, Eugene Victor Tooms, was led out of the soundproofed room where the polygraph had been conducted.  Mulder looked up, and watched as Colton and Fuller walked in there, then Scully emerged from the observation room.  She looked up at him, and the tension in her face was obvious.

 

   "Well, do you want to take a look at the results?" she asked.  He nodded and followed her into the room, where the technician was beginning to put her equipment away. 

 

   Colton and Fuller were bent over a long strip of printout from the polygraph, and as Scully and Mulder walked in, Fuller let out a frustrated exclamation and pushed the paper away. 

 

   "Well that screws _that_ up," he said angrily.  "Tooms is clean."

 

   Scully bit her lip, but Mulder quietly reached around her for the printout.  "Mind if I take a look?"  No one answered, so he took it to a free area of the table to examine it. 

 

   "If it wasn't Tooms, what was his explanation for being inside the ventilation system?" Scully demanded of her two colleagues.

 

   "He's a vermin control officer," Colton replied, in a calmer voice than she'd expected.  "Someone complained about a smell in the air conditioning system, so he was investigating it.  We checked his story and there was a dead rat inside the system."

 

   "He was doing that at nearly midnight?"

 

   "So he's one of the few city servants with initiative and we busted him for it!" Fuller snapped.

 

   "Tooms was in that building by himself without alerting security - "

 

   "Dana," Colton said, his tone one of exaggerated patience, "he passed the test.  So he was the wrong guy; it happens.  It doesn't mean your profile was wrong."

 

   "Oh, so it's _my_ profile now, is it?" Scully noted sarcastically, her temper rising, and Colton flushed angrily.

 

   "Scully's right - Tooms is the killer," Mulder interrupted suddenly.

 

   Fuller rolled his eyes impatiently.  "What have you got, Mulder?" he asked, in a tone of exaggerated patience.

 

   "He failed the test on questions eleven and thirteen - the readings nearly go off the scale."

 

   There was an ominous pause, in which Mulder raised his head to look at the three agents with an expression of mild inquiry.  He knew what was coming.

 

   "If those are the questions about him being a hundred years old or being alive in 1933," Colton said in a poisonous tone, "then let me tell you, Spooky - I would have had a reaction!"

 

   "Tooms is the guy," Mulder replied steadily.

 

   "Well, I'm letting him go," Fuller said flatly.  "I don't need that machine to tell me that Tooms wasn't alive in 1933 - whatever the relevance of _that_ might be - so we've got nothing on him.  Nothing we can use, that is!" he added acidly, and he walked out.

 

   Colton paused, pointedly ignoring Mulder, and looked at Scully.  "Are you coming?"

 

   She straightened slightly, looking him in the eye.  There was a brief silence, during which something unpleasant seemed to hang in the air between the two agents that even Mulder couldn't analyse.  Then Scully's back stiffened.  "I'm officially assigned to the X-files, Tom."

 

   Surprisingly, Colton persisted.  "I'll see what I can do about that - "

 

   "Thanks," she retorted, "but I'm well able to look after myself."

 

   "Dana - "

 

   "Let it go, Tom," she warned him.

 

   Colton's restraint finally snapped.  "You know, I'd heard a lot of stories about how "out there" this guy Mulder was," he sneered, "but I'm beginning to think maybe Jack Willis is right."  Scully's eyes flashed murderously, but he ignored it, leaning toward her and stabbing one finger in the impassive Mulder's direction.  "He isn't just "out there", Dana - the guy is insane.  And it says something about you, that you hang out with him!"

 

   He stalked out of the room, leaving a deathly hush behind him.

 

   Scully felt a twinge of sick alarm, for Jack Willis was not a subject she particularly wanted to discuss with Mulder, and yet questions seemed inevitable.  But when Mulder met her gaze, to her relief his expression was as smooth and non-committal as ever, and he showed no signs of wanting to pursue the topic.

 

   "Nice colleagues you have," he commented amiably.

 

xXx

 

   "You know," Scully said, as they walked out of the room, "you must have realised they wouldn't believe you, so why did you push it?"

 

   "Maybe I thought you'd caught the right guy," Mulder offered.

 

   Scully gave him a look.  "And?"

 

   " _And_ ... maybe sometimes the urge to mess with their heads outweighs the millstone of humiliation," he acknowledged wryly.

 

   Scully still wasn't convinced.  "I don't know ...."  She studied his face, looking for some clue to help her, but all he offered her was his perfected, patented bland smile.  She took a risk.  "It seemed like you were being almost ... territorial back there."

 

   "Of course I was," he said at once, surprising her.  "Scully, you're not a fool, but Colton is. You're not afraid to take a risk on the unconventional if you think it might possibly yield the answers you need, but in case you hadn't noticed, Colton is terrified to do anything that might make him look an idiot or spoil his chances of climbing the ladder.  Unconventional isn't a word in his vocabulary."

 

   "I think you're seeing something in me that isn't there," she said doubtfully.

 

   "You took a risk on me, didn't you?"

 

   Scully smiled in spite of herself.  "Yes, but - "

 

   "No buts.  I'm an unacceptable risk to most guys at the Bureau."  Now she was silent and when Mulder saw the troubled look on her face, he thought perhaps he'd pushed her too far.  "Look, I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to drop this," he said gently.  "Like you said, it is Colton's case.  And if I'm honest with both of us, you'd be a fool not to take him up on his offer to get you out of that basement.  It's a crying shame that someone of your abilities should be stuck with the X-files, because believe me, Scully, you're unlikely to make any spectacular career moves from down there - it's a dead-end job."

 

   "AD Skinner doesn't seem to think so," she replied neutrally.

 

   She got him there.  The one unfathomable detail in the whole business was Skinner's involvement - as it had been when Mulder himself had been given the assignment.

 

   Scully saw that she'd confounded him, at least temporarily, and pressed her advantage.  "Look, Mulder, I'm not taking this crap," she told him bluntly.  "You're not fobbing me off - I know you know something more than those polygraph results, and I want to know what it is."

 

   Something sparked in his eyes and a small grin appeared.  "Okay ... prepare to be unconventioned."  He went over to the Enquiries desk and Scully watched disapprovingly as he charmed the young female officer there into handing over a visitor pass and a key. 

 

   _Quite a mutual admiration society,_ she thought, disgruntled, as the girl and Mulder flirted shamelessly with each other.

 

   Then she told herself off for being catty.  After all, what did it matter to her whom he flirted with?

 

xXx

 

   The key turned out to have a purpose; Mulder had somehow persuaded the young officer to let them borrow a room where there was a computer with some sophisticated software for matching fingerprints to suspects.

 

   "I did some thinking after you showed me the print from Usher's office the other day," he told her, expertly manipulating the programme to call up Eugene Tooms's arrest sheet, "and I used a computer at the college to try something out.  It has a similar programme to this one."

 

   "So?" Scully asked, not getting the point.

 

   Mulder pushed his bag of sunflower seeds toward her, and highlighted one of Tooms's finger prints.  Then he called up the print Scully found at the crime scene and laid them side by side.  "I tried it on one of my own prints, just to satisfy my curiosity.  But anyway; look at this - "  He set the computer to scan both prints and it bleeped almost immediately.  "Obviously no match," he said calmly.

 

   Scully helped herself to a seed and popped it in her mouth.  "I could have told you that."

 

   "Indubitably, my dear Watson.  However, what if you were to do this ...."  Mulder punched another command into the computer and they both watched as the programme stretched Tooms's print vertically and superimposed it on the one from Usher's office.  The machine bleeped again - but this time it was a hundred percent match.

 

   Scully stopped chewing and stared.  Then she turned to look at Mulder, wide-eyed.  "But ... how can that be?"

 

   He shrugged.  "Beats me.  All I know is - they let the guy go."

 

   "Shit!" she muttered angrily, and went to stand up, but Mulder restrained her with a hand on her arm.

 

   "What do you think you're going to do?"

 

   "I've got to see Colton and Fuller, and - "

 

   Mulder shook his head tiredly.  "Scully, haven't you learned yet?  They don't want to hear it.  As far as Fuller's concerned, Tooms cleared the polygraph - he's clean.  They're not going to listen to you telling them that Spooky Mulder used computer graphics to fix the prints!"

 

   Scully sat down again, opened her mouth to say something, then changed her mind.  She looked thoughtfully into mid-air for a moment or two, and Mulder was entranced by the sight of some steely resolve appearing in her eyes. 

 

   _Whoa!_ he thought, watching her with a kind of awed delight.  _No doubt about it - this is war.  Better watch your ass, Colton._

 

xXx

 

   The next day started badly for Mulder.  Sam, having slept most of the evening, awoke at just after two with a formidable amount of energy in his small body and proceeded to keep his father awake until nearly five.  After that Mulder went off to sleep like a dead thing, and when the alarm re-awoke him at seven, he was in a foul mood, exhausted and feeling like hell.

 

   His son, however, still managed to be impossibly lively at breakfast, creating havoc among the cornflakes until the time came to get dressed ... and then the real fun began.  Four small outfits and twenty minutes later, Mulder finally wrestled the toddler into the car seat and strapped him in.  He mentally reviewed one or two really select profanities from his days with the VCS (all of which were now strictly prohibited from his vocabulary, lest certain small, sharp ears picked them up) and hit the road, acutely conscious of morning traffic and a class which was due to start in less than half an hour.

 

   Just under three quarters of an hour later, he finally pulled into his parking spot - miracle of miracles, no one had taken it - and glanced at Sam in the rear-view mirror just before he opened his door.

 

   The round, deceptively cherubic face was relaxed and peaceful; the little monster had finally fallen asleep.

 

   Aggrieved, Mulder set about the next monumental task - gathering up both Sam and the extraordinary amount of baggage he seemed to need for a few hours in day-care.  Sam himself never stirred.

 

   "He's fast asleep."

 

   Mulder jumped and dropped a bag, which Scully calmly retrieved, her face alight with mischief.  "Payback time, Mulder," she told him, shouldering the bag herself and taking another out of his hand.

 

   "Huh?" he asked intelligently, wondering what she was doing there.

 

   "You did the same to me, in Bellefleur," she reminded him.  He still looked blank, so she filled in the gaps for him.  "When we met, remember?  In Oregon.  You nearly gave me a heart-attack." 

 

   "If you say so," he grunted, and headed for the faculty entrance.

 

   Scully fell in beside him, studying his face with a mixture of amusement and sympathy.  "Bad night, huh?"

 

   "You have no idea."  He headed straight for the day-care centre, intent on handing the child over to someone who actually got paid to put up with pre-school psychopaths.  The level of noise and activity coming from the suite made him grateful that Sam wasn't twins, even though it sometimes seemed that way.

 

   Scully silently handed over the extra luggage at the door, and watched Mulder grimly giving the toddler to a woman wearing a large badge that had the University logo and "Hi! I'm Mandy!" printed on it.

 

   "Poor Mandy," she commiserated, when he reappeared.

 

   "Tell me about it," Mulder snorted.  "Bosnia's a tea party compared to what'll happen in there when he wakes up."

 

   "He had you up all night?"

 

   "Most of it.  I need a caffeine drip this morning - no, make that two."  He rubbed his face vigorously - then it finally dawned on him that this really was Scully stood next to him in the college corridor.  "Scully, what are you doing here?" he frowned.

 

   "How are your classes fixed this morning?" she asked.

 

   The frown deepened.  "I'm late for them - _very_ late. Why?"

 

   "There was another murder last night."

 

xXx

 

 

   It was past midday when Mulder's car finally drew up outside Thomas Werner's house.  Scully was waiting for him by the official yellow tape which prevented any stray members of the public invading the crime-scene, and when he looked her cool, collected smile, he had the feeling that she'd only just arrived herself.

 

   He was right.  Scully had spent the morning persuading AD Skinner to sign the paperwork which would allow her to bring Mulder in on the investigation - or her investigation at least - in a semi-official capacity.  It hadn't been easy, and the interview had left her feeling almost as bruised and battered emotionally as the 'unofficial' reprimand she'd received from AD Hill before leaving Quantico.

 

   Skinner had had one or two things to say regarding Mulder, and her connection with him.  But she'd got the documents, and that was all that mattered right now.

 

   "How's the demon-child?" she asked, as Mulder climbed out of his car.

 

   He smiled wryly.  "Wreaking havoc still.  What have you got here?"

 

   "Thomas Werner, age 52, a senior exec with a plastics company.  No wife or family; he lived alone.  His secretary raised the alarm when he didn't arrive for an important meeting this morning."

 

   "I guess he's hepatically challenged now, huh?"  Mulder scanned the building curiously.  "Where's Colton?"

 

   "Still inside," Scully smiled, "going crazy, trying to think up plausible reasons for the liver being removed and driving the forensics team nuts."

 

   Mulder gave her an uneasy smile.  "How welcome are we going to be at this party?  I mean, it's not that I don't enjoy going a couple of rounds with old colleagues, but I'm not exactly on form this morning."

 

   She looked at her watch pointedly.  "This afternoon, you mean."

 

   "Told you so."

 

   "It's okay - Skinner's okayed my investigation and your involvement.  I've got the paperwork if Colton gets difficult."

 

   "It'll take more than paperwork to shut that guy up," Mulder sighed, but followed her up to the house.  They could hear Colton's voice before they ever entered the door.

 

   "... And I want a check done on liver transplants - this could be black market, someone selling livers privately to people desperate for treatment ...."

 

   In spite of himself, Mulder began to grin at the idea which was, in his book at least, as bizarre as any abduction theory he'd ever cooked up.  Apparently someone else on the team felt the same way, because there was a mumble of dissent just before Colton came barrelling out to see who was invading his crime scene.

 

   "Yeah I know it's a long shot, but I'm ready to give any theory a run at this stage," he retorted.  Then he stopped, seeing Scully and Mulder, and scowled.  "Any sane theory, that is," he bit out, and moved to block their path.  "I'm sorry, Dana, but I want only _authorised_ members of my team here."

 

   As an attempt at politeness it wasn't bad, Mulder judged, considering how Colton obviously felt about them.  Besides, he'd received brush-offs like this for years, even before his reputation became so unsavoury, so it didn't bother him. 

 

   But Scully saw it differently, smelling condescension in the other agent's tone, and her eyes flashed.  "We have authorisation, Tom."

 

   " _We?_ " Colton snapped, the facade of politeness slipping almost at once.  "I see only one federal agent here, Dana!"

 

   Scully had been prepared for this, and thrust the authorisation papers she'd wrung out of Skinner into Colton's hands contemptuously.  " _We._   Mulder's working with me as a consulting criminal psychologist."

 

   For a moment, Mulder thought Colton might actually stamp his foot in temper - the tension in the young agent's body was almost palpable and his face turned a most unattractive shade of crimson.  As it was, the poisonous look he gave Scully should have killed her where she stood.  "Whose side are you on, Dana?"

 

   Scully's eyes turned cold as ice.  "The victim's," she replied, and pushed past both men into the house. 

 

   Mulder was left to take the full weight of Colton's fury, but fortunately for him, the agent couldn't seem to think up a thing to say.  "What's the matter with you, Colton?" he asked finally.  "Are you really so afraid she'll solve your case?"

 

   Colton stalked away without answering, and after a moment Mulder followed Scully into the building.

 

   When he walked in she was already crouched by the side of the body, talking medical jargon to one of the forensics team, so he left her to it and began to look around the room.  He'd had time, during his sleepless night, to do some thinking about the fingerprint revelation and had begun formulating a theory, so after a quick look around the living room he headed straight for the fireplace.  The opening was wide, but one look told Mulder that the actual chimney flue could never give admittance to an adult human, or even a fairly robust child.

 

   But the fingerprinting team had been more thorough with this crime scene, and when he straightened up to examine the wide white marble mantelpiece, the elongated smudge of a print stood out in sharp relief.

 

   It matched the other prints in the X-files.  Not that Mulder was in the slightest surprised.  He was merely pleased to have clear evidence of something he already knew - that Eugene Tooms had been in Thomas Werner's house last night.  His eyes drifted long the mantle, noting the few personal effects on display there, when something else caught his eye.

 

   Werner had been a bachelor, and like most bachelors he was a little careless in the household tidiness stakes.  Possibly he had a regular cleaning service to help out, but whatever the case, this mantelpiece hadn't been dusted in perhaps as much as a week.  And among the dust at one end, Mulder could see four small marks, as if something which had been stood there recently had just been moved.  He looked down the mantelpiece again and saw that at the opposite end there was a small crystal jar with four short curvy feet.  It was positioned in such a way as to suggest that there _could_ have been a second, matching jar at this end.

 

   Scully appeared at his shoulder, her expression grim.  "It was an identical M.O.," she told him.  "The was liver ripped out, apparently with bare hands, and there was no obvious entry point; the house was locked tight from the inside, and the police had to break a window to get in."

 

   "It was Tooms," Mulder said simply.  He almost - but not quite - touched the marks in the dust on the mantelpiece.  "He was here, and he took something away with him besides the liver."

 

xXx

 

_Finding out information on Eugene Victor Tooms could become a competitive sport,_ Mulder thought with some amusement, an hour later.  He was taking a break in his own allotted task and  watching Scully do battle with the officers of the Baltimore PD for details of the case.  What made the scene all the more entertaining for him was that he was watching it through the glass window of the office he was sat in, with Scully on the other side.  He couldn't hear a word being said, but the visuals were stunning.

 

   Definitely a hell of a lot more fun than sitting in here with a microfiche machine for company, but as he'd been the one to suggest combing the records for details of Tooms's past, he supposed he had only himself to blame when Scully had smilingly told him to enjoy himself.  God, she was a cruel woman.

 

   He loved it.

 

   Mulder sighed, adjusted his reading glasses and turned back to the reader, preparing to start again. 

 

   A sharp click of the door saved him from certain boredom.  Scully came in quickly, her face alight with triumph at having finally vanquished the enemy. 

 

   "Baltimore PD checked out Tooms's apartment after the arrest," she told him, and waved a sheaf of papers.  "The address was false - no one ever lived there.  And Tooms himself hasn't turned up for work since we pulled him in."

 

   Mulder wasn't surprised.  "I've found out a few things," he offered.

 

   "Oh?"  Scully dumped the papers on a nearby desk and came to stand beside him.  "What have you got?"

 

   He smiled.  "'How do we learn about the present?  We look to the past'," he quoted, and she groaned softly.

 

   "Not the Thoughts of Patterson, Mulder.  Spare me, at least until I've had a strong coffee."

 

   Mulder chuckled.  "What do you expect from me?  I worked with the guy for four years."  He nodded to the microfiche reader.  "In this case he was right.  This is where it all began, in 1903 on Exeter Street."

 

   Scully's brow rose.  "Tooms gave his address as Apartment 103, 66 Exeter Street."

 

   "Exactly.  He may not have been lying after all.  Look at the census form for that year."

 

   "'Eugene Victor Tooms ... Date of birth: unknown ... Apartment 103, 66 Exeter Street, Baltimore, Maryland ... Occupation: Dogcatcher.'" 

 

   Mulder handed her one of the older X-files.  "Now check out the address of the first murder."

 

   Scully gave him a suspicious look, but opened the file.  "'Apartment 203, 66 Exeter Street - "  Her head jerked up and she stared at Mulder, wide-eyed.  "He killed the guy above him!"  Then she paused and reconsidered.  "It's not him, of course."

 

   "Of course not."

 

   "It's a relative maybe.  His what? - grandfather?"

 

   "Great-grandfather more likely," Mulder supplied obligingly.  "There's just one problem with that - the prints are identical."

 

   "Genetics could explain that, and the sociopathic behaviour."

 

   He looked at her, both amused and amazed, and realised she was serious.  "How?" he demanded.

 

   Scully knew she was stretching credibility a little, but surely no more than he was.  "It's conditioning," she explained.  "It begins with a parent who raises a sociopathic child, and the pattern repeats itself in the next generation, and so on and so forth.  It's been proven in violent, anti-social families - "

 

   "So what are we dealing with here, the anti-Waltons?"

 

   "Mulder - "

 

   He raised a placating hand.  "No, look, we aren't going to get anywhere like this.  What we need to do is track Tooms, find him before he kills again.  He has a definite pattern of five killings every thirty years, which means he's got one more to go this year, and if we don't catch him now, the next chance we'll get will be in - "

 

   "The year 2023."

 

   " - And by that time, you'll be the head of the Bureau with a high court judge for a husband and half a dozen kids.  So I suggest that you take over going through the census records and I'll start ploughing through the marriage, birth and death certificates.  And ...."

 

   "And what?" she asked, beginning to smile.

 

   "You wouldn't happen to have some Dramamine on you, would you?"  He gave her a pathetic look.  "These machines make me seasick."

 

   The smile widened.  "I think I can find some."  She headed for the door.

 

   Mulder watched her go.  "That smile had better not be for the high court judge," he muttered ruefully.

 

xXx

 

   It seemed to take forever.  It was at times like this that Mulder cursed his photographic memory, for although the microfiche was moving too fast most of the time for him to actually _record_ what he was seeing, it was still enough to guarantee that he would be dreaming of legal forms for the next three or four nights.  Always supposing Sam let him sleep long enough to dream -

 

   Hell!  He'd left Sam with the day-care centre.  Mulder checked his watch hurriedly and huffed a sigh of relief when he saw that he still had an hour's grace before collecting the kid. 

 

   Scully looked up at the sound, and smiled wearily, stretching her back stiffly after sitting in one position too long.  "Found anything?"

 

   "Nah.  I swear the guy was never born, never married, and he sure as hell never died.  How can someone just not _exist_ in this day and age?"

 

   "Beats me.  I've found out one useful piece of information, though."

 

   Mulder felt some of his fatigue flow away at her pleased tone.  "Sock it to me."

 

   "The current address of the officer who investigated the Powhatan Mill murders in 1933."  She passed a slip of paper to him with the information on, and stood up to try and relieve one stubborn kink in the small of her back.

 

   "Lynne Acres Retirement Home," Mulder mused.  "That's not far from here."

 

   "We could go see him now," Scully suggested.  "I'll give the home a call and see if it's convenient."

 

   Mulder hesitated.  "I'll have to fetch the Terror of the West from day-care and hand him over to my mother first."

 

   "Okay.  Tell you what; you go pick up Sam and take him home, and I'll pick you up in - what?  Hour and a half?"

 

   "Fine."  Mulder grabbed his jacket and headed for the door, grateful just to be leaving the microfiche behind.

 

xXx

 

_I knew I should have just opened a vein this morning,_ Mulder thought bitterly, an hour later.  _Life was obviously out to get me the moment the clock struck midnight last night._   At least Sam was behaving himself for now.

 

   That was probably the only good part of the scenario.  Mulder had arrived home with his son, after battling rush-hour traffic, only to discover a note from his mother on the kitchen table announcing that she was meeting friends and wouldn't be back until much later.  Experience had taught Mulder that "much later" inevitably meant some time around midnight.

 

   Fortunately, the early stages of his crash course in single parenthood had taught the former FBI agent the benefits of the old Boy Scout motto, "Be Prepared".  Sam was now happily shovelling an emergency dinner of baked beans and fingers of toast into his mouth and down his front, while his father tried frantically to get hold of Scully on her cell phone.  Finally, he gave up and returned to the table to try and keep the chaos there down to manageable levels.

 

   "Grandma would have a fit if she knew you'd had something out of a can twice today," he told Sam, gently wiping a splotch of sauce from the front of the toddler's hair.  Spaghetti shapes had been on the lunch menu at day-care.  "Never mind; Grandma's not here.  Again," he added under his breath. 

 

   Sam paused, looking at Mulder anxiously, and offered him a spoonful of beans.

 

   "It's okay, Sunshine, Daddy's not hungry.  You eat them."  Mulder stroked his soft, dark hair gently and absently tried to flatten the obstinate cowlick at the front which so closely mirrored his own.

 

   It was weird, he mused, how quickly you adapted to new situations.  Three years ago, if anyone had suggested he'd be here with an almost-two-year-old son, no longer an FBI agent but a college lecturer in post-graduate psychology, he'd have laughed in their faces. 

 

   He'd never wanted children.  It was something he and Phoebe had agreed upon right from the beginning, she having no maternal instincts and he having a mortal horror of fatherhood.  His experiences with his own father's drunkenness (among other  things) had proved to be the best contraceptive ever devised.  And when he'd stood in the maternity wing of that hospital in Denver and seen the product of what had, in essence, been Phoebe's rape of him, he'd nearly thrown up there and then.  'Fear' didn't begin to describe the melange of emotions running through him at the sight of the child he'd planned never to have.

 

   Things had changed quickly, though.  They had to.  Despite his mother's initial energy in moving both him and the baby in with her - ostensibly so she could help out - Mulder had fast discovered that she was in fact almost no help at all.  She showed him how to do things, then left him to it.  Everything was fine while the baby was clean, quiet and presentable, and could be shown off to her friends, but when Sam started to fret she couldn't hand him back fast enough.  And although she tended these days to have a lot of opinions on how the boy should be raised, fed, dressed, whatever, she was often short on practical assistance. 

 

   _I suppose I should have guessed,_ Mulder thought, as he cleared away the dishes and mopped up before taking Sam to get changed.  Mrs. Mulder had never been a 'close' parent herself; he could remember he and his sister Samantha having a nanny at one point, and later they'd spent a lot of time with his Aunt Rachel.  It had seemed normal at the time, although his mother had never worked and he was hard put to discover exactly what she _had_ done with her time.

 

   His initial plans, of leaving Sam with his mother while he went back to work at the Bureau, had been blown apart almost immediately.  She had no intention of taking on the full-time care of a baby, which left him with few options.  Desperate, and unable to conceive of giving up a job he loved and had worked so hard to achieve in, Mulder had reached the stage of considering giving his son up for adoption.  He couldn't see any other way of managing, and actually consulted an uncle who was lawyer on how to proceed.  A cousin had come forward and offered to take Sam herself, to be raised with her children.

 

   But at the last minute, he hadn't been able to do it.  Despite six weeks of sleepless nights, bitterly resenting the noisy, messy, demanding intrusion into his life, and being unable to look at the baby without seeing its mother, Mulder had suddenly realised he simply couldn't give him away to someone else.  This, at least in part, had its roots in the fact that he had spent most of his own life abandoned by his parents, and he couldn't do that to his own son.  But it also had a lot to do with something a lot less tangible; something which had made it physically impossible to hand Sam over when Annie and her husband arrived to take him.

 

   Mulder remembered that moment very vividly; the feeling that it would have been easier to take a knife and hack off a limb, than to give his son to someone else.

 

   The next day, he'd handed his resignation to AD Skinner, and thereafter Sam had always come first on his list of priorities.  As he changed the toddler into a clean shirt and pair of dungarees now, Mulder wondered if Scully would take this particular manifestation of those priorities philosophically.

 

   Not for the first time, of course, he was underestimating Scully.

 

xXx

 

   "My son moved to Florida with his wife and kids two years ago," Frank Briggs said.  The former detective was happily holding a rather sleepy Sam in his lap.  "They visit now and again, but - you miss them.  How old is he?"

 

   "Twenty months."  Mulder gave him a concerned look.  "Are you sure he's not too heavy - "

 

   "No, he's fine."  Briggs transferred his attention from the toddler to his other two guests.  "I've been waiting for you for twenty-five years," he said abruptly.

 

   Scully's eyes widened, surprised.  "Sir?"

 

   "I called it quits in 1968," he explained. 

 

   Mulder was less fazed.  "Can you tell us about the 1933 murders at Powhatan Mill?"

 

   Briggs paused, and for a moment the look in his eyes was far away.  Finally, he sighed and looked down at Sam, before meeting their eyes again.  "Powhatan Mill was like nothing else in my career," he said quietly.  "There were other murders, some of them equally horrific in their own way, but I could always put it behind me and go home to play with my kids.  I mean, you've got to be able to do that when you're a cop.  You'd go crazy else, right?"

 

   Scully nodded in silent agreement.  Detachment was something you had to learn in law enforcement work, the ability to separate your work from the rest of your life.

 

   "But those murders at Powhatan Mill ....  They were different.  As soon as I walked into that room, my heart went cold, my hands went numb ....  I could feel _it_."

 

   "'It'?" Scully questioned.

 

   Briggs paused, searching for the words to explain.  "It was like all the horrors mankind is capable of, condensed into one space," he said finally.  "When I heard about the Nazi concentration camps ... and the atrocities in Bosnia, I was reminded of those murders.  It was as though all the horrible acts people are capable of somehow gave birth to a human monster.  That's why I've been waiting for you.  That ... _thing_ ... has killed again, hasn't it?"

 

   "Four times so far," Mulder confirmed.

 

   Briggs nodded, and carefully moved his wheelchair slightly so that he had a clearer view of the room behind him.  "There's a box in that trunk over there," he said to Mulder, pointing to a corner by the head of his bed.  "Get it out for me, will you?"

 

   Mulder opened the trunk and retrieved a strong cardboard box, setting it down on a small table at Briggs's elbow.  The retired detective pulled the flaps open, then gestured to Scully and Mulder to take the contents out.  It was packed with file folders, surveillance photos and other bits and pieces.

 

   "This is all the evidence I collected, officially and unofficially."

 

   Scully raised a brow at him.  "Unofficially?"

 

   He smiled faintly.  "I knew the murders in 1963 were committed by the same person, but by that time I'd been retired to desk-work.  The sheriff's department didn't want me there, said I was too old.  But I couldn't let it go, so I kept tabs of my own.  I knew someday someone might need it."

 

   Mulder pulled out a glass jar filled with clear liquid and a chunk of ... something.  "What the - ?"

 

   Scully's eyes widened.  "Is that a piece of a liver?" she demanded.

 

   Briggs nodded.  "Left at one of the crime scenes.  Livers weren't the only trophies he took, though."

 

   "What do you mean?"

 

   "In each case, the families of the deceased reported personal items missing - a hairbrush in the Walters case, a coffee mug in the Taylor murder.  Something small."

 

   Mulder put the jar down carefully, and looked at the old man.  "Have you ever heard the name Eugene Tooms?" he asked.

 

   The faint smile returned.  Briggs tapped on one of the files with a finger.  "Take a look in there."

 

   Mulder opened it, pulled out a sheaf of photos - and stopped cold.  "Scully, look."

 

   "Like I said, when they wouldn't let me on the case in 1963, I did some of my own work," the Briggs's voice continued dryly.  "But that was Tooms thirty years ago, of course."

 

   If it hadn't been for the black-and-white pictures, and the anachronistic clothing worn by the man in them, no one would have known they hadn't been taken yesterday.

 

   "Oh my God," Scully murmured, staring at the familiar boyish face in the photos.  "He hasn't aged a day."

 

   "Doing pretty good for a guy of over a hundred," Mulder agreed, a little shaken himself at this unexpected confirmation of his theories.  He turned the next picture over and they were confronted with a photo of an old, rather ratty-looking apartment block with a large sign over the front saying "Pierre Paris and Sons".

 

   "That's the apartment block where Tooms lived," Briggs put in grimly.  "It was at - "

 

   "66 Exeter Street?"

 

   "That's the one."

 

   Mulder looked at the photo again silently, then looked up and met Scully's determined gaze.

 

xXx

 

   By the time they got back to Mulder's house it was dark, and Sam was dead to the world in the back seat.  Mulder looked up at the windows of the house and noticed that they were still dark; and his mother's car wasn't in the drive.

 

   Scully noticed too.  "Does your mom often stay out this late?"

 

   "Yep."  Mulder changed the subject quickly.  "Will you stop for a coffee?"

 

   She noticed the evasion, but decided not to mention it.  "That would be nice," she smiled. 

 

   "Okay.  I've just got to put the car away - "

 

   "Give me your key and I'll take Sam in if you like."

 

   He looked surprised.  "Are you sure?"

 

   Scully chuckled at his tone.  "In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a fully paid-up member of the Maiden Aunts' Society, Mulder.  I've been handling pre-school psychopaths since I was sixteen and my eldest brother got married.  I think I can manage Snoozy back there."

 

   "Okaaaay ...."  Mulder gave her the key.  "Though I have to warn you - he snores.  I think it's a family trait."

 

   "I'll remember that for future reference," she smiled, and got out of the car.

 

   It wasn't until Mulder had got the car into the garage that he suddenly registered what she'd said.  _What the hell is_ that _supposed to mean?_ he wondered, staring at himself wide-eyed in the rear-view mirror.

 

   For the sake of his sanity, he decided not to consider that question too closely right now.

 

xXx

 

   "I'll see you tomorrow, then," Scully said as Mulder escorted her to the door an hour later.

 

   "Yeah, okay."  He paused and added quietly, "Always supposing he doesn't strike again tonight."

 

   The small frown on her face showed that Scully had considered this possibility herself.  "Would he be that reckless?" she asked finally.  "With all the other killings, he left at least a few days in between each."

 

   "That _is_ his pattern," Mulder agreed, "but we still don't know what he wants the livers for, or how urgent he considers the need to take them.  And even if we did - there's nothing we can do tonight.  There's no way I can come with you to search that place now, and even if I could, I don't constitute proper back-up anymore.  You won't get that kind of back-up at this hour even if you could persuade Colton and Fuller to let you have it, and if you so much as consider going in tonight without back-up, Scully, I'll - "

 

   "Call Skinner and denounce me as a Republican?"

 

   He chuckled.  "Something like that."

 

   "Don't worry, it's not an option," she assured him.  "I'm not interested in unnecessary heroics."

 

   "Good."  Mulder shuffled his feet slightly.  "You need a partner," he said abruptly.  His tone was constricted and uncomfortable.

 

   "That too is not an option," Scully grimaced.  "I don't think you'd get anyone to work with me right now."

 

   "Yeah.  Besides ... anyone who _wants_ to work with you is suspect, Scully, and anyone who doesn't could be a liability.  It's the same problem I faced, and I can't see any easy way around it."

 

   "All the same, they won't let me work solo for long."

 

   Mulder knew it.  And it worried him, not just because the projected partner was statistically likely to be male.  Irrational jealousies aside, he meant what he'd said: anyone willing to work on the X-files had to be viewed with caution in his experience.  There were too many potentially 'sensitive' areas of investigation on file.

 

   Scully was so damn vulnerable, and there wasn't a thing he could do about it except be there for her, in whatever role she would permit.

 

   "Anyway, I've got to go," she said, breaking in on his thoughts.

 

   "Okay ...."  Mulder walked out to her car with her and watched as she strapped herself in.  At the last minute, he leaned in through the window.  "Hey, Scully, tell me something."

 

   She raised an enquiring brow.

 

   "How come you aren't married with six kids?"

 

   For a brief second, so fast he thought he'd imagined it, Mulder saw a shadow cross her face.  Then Scully was giving him her usual wry half-smile. 

 

   "Obviously I haven't met that high court judge yet, Mulder."  And she slipped the clutch, letting the car pull slowly out of the drive.

 

xXx

 

   66 Exeter Street looked more like an abandoned warehouse than an apartment block.  Stacks of refuse and rubble were piled up in the street outside and the building itself had been condemned for some time; although whoever was responsible for the actual act of demolition had apparently forgotten the place, as the shell of it at least was still standing.

 

   Scully judged that no one could possibly have lived in this place for a good twenty years; and judging by Detective Briggs's photographs, it had been in a pretty ropey condition even in the 1960s when apartments were still being let out there.  The whole area was a slum, but there was a curious feel about this building in particular, as if the rot had somehow started here and spread outwards through the streets.

 

   It was not the most enticing prospect on a bright sunny morning.  She glanced sideways at Mulder who was also viewing the block with disfavour.  "Ready to go?" she asked.

 

   He grunted.  "Did we bring any bug repellent?"

 

   "Mulder, I don't think even cockroaches would live in this place."

 

   "Not with Tooms for company, they wouldn't."  Mulder dragged himself out of the car and winced in the bright sunlight.

 

   Scully almost winced in sympathy.  He looked terrible; exhausted and more than a little grumpy, although he'd seemed relieved when she'd arrived, as though he wanted to get out of the house.  She was reluctant to ask questions, but she was beginning to wonder if all was not well between Mulder and his mother; aside from the incident the day before when Mrs. Mulder hadn't been around to take care of Sam, Scully had been to the house half a dozen or so times since she'd met him, and his mother had never yet been in.  Comments he'd dropped once or twice suggested that this was a bone of contention between them and that Mrs. Mulder was not the devoted grandparent she liked to portray herself as.

 

   But then, Mulder's family was difficult for her to fathom anyway.  Scully herself came from a large Catholic family of Irish descent, and they were all almost oppressively close.  A situation like Mulder's could never have happened to one of the Scullys; there would have been a whole host of female relatives positively panting to take over the care of little Sam while Mulder himself got on with his job and his life. 

 

   But Mulder's family ....  Scully knew he had a large extended family and that they were Jewish, but he seemed to have very little contact with them and received almost no support.  This seemed extraordinary to her; it ran contrary to everything she knew of Jewish families.  His mother, despite giving the appearance of supporting him, was never there.  His father ....  His father was out of the picture, but according to his son, William Mulder was a drunk who had killed his daughter in a road accident and then abandoned the rest of his family.

 

   And then, of course, there was Mulder's ex-wife Phoebe, of whom Scully knew almost nothing except that she was on the FBI's most wanted list.

 

   'Dysfunctional' was not the word to describe the Mulders.

 

   But the one Scully was most concerned about at the moment was the one who had obviously spent most of the night sat up with a fretful little boy, and yet was still determined to help her track down a serial killer this morning in spite of it.  She worried about him disproportionately.

 

   She would have been extremely surprised to discover that part of his sleepless night had been spent worrying about her.  Mulder had come with her today at least in part because he was concerned at the idea of her investigating a man like Eugene Tooms alone.  But he knew better than to air his worries aloud; she wouldn't appreciate it.  Instead, he focussed on the matter at hand.

 

   "You think we should have some sort of safety gear, hard-hats or something, going in here?" he commented as they entered the building.

 

   "Probably, but I think it's a little late to worry about it now."  Scully eased her way around the semi-boarded-up doorway, and coughed a little as her feet stirred up clouds of dust.

 

   Emerging through the hole with a little more difficulty, Mulder straightened up beside her in the gloom and flicked on his flashlight.  There were in what had once been the hallway of the building: to one side were the heavily secured doors of two elevators, and opposite the entrance was a narrow staircase.  He cast the light around, scanning the small area, noting the graffiti on the walls and general vandal damage.

 

   "That's weird," he said softly.  Crossing the wooden floor cautiously, Mulder examined the graffiti with his fingertips.  "Scully, look how old this is.  None of it's recently done."

 

   "There's no sign of habitation by transients either," she agreed, flashing her own light into the corners.  "You'd think this place would be a safe haven for drug users and tramps, but ...."

 

   Mulder's expression, when he turned around, mirrored her own.  Neither of them was really surprised at the level of desertion here.  There was a curious feel to the building, something ... not right.  It was too silent.  Too abandoned.  And Scully had been unwittingly right about the cockroaches; bizarrely, there was no evidence of infestation, by rats or anything else.

 

   "I guess we'd better check out apartment 103," he said, gesturing towards the stairs.

 

   "I guess so," Scully agreed unenthusiastically.

 

   "After you?"

 

   "No, really - age before beauty."

 

   Mulder grinned weakly and started up the staircase.  "Mind your feet, Scully, some of the steps are a bit rickety."

 

   The feeling of wrongness grew as they reached the first floor and peaked when they stopped outside apartment 103.  Mulder hesitated, glancing at Scully who had drawn her gun, then pushed on the door.

 

   It wasn't locked or even closed properly, and swung open under his hand.  Scanning the room warily, they edged inside, but there was nothing to be seen.  The 'apartments' of 66 Exeter Street had obviously never been more than bedsits in the first place.  The single room was stripped bare of furnishings, with nothing left but a filthy, dried up sink in one corner.  The window was boarded up, with only a few narrow strips of sunlight filtering through it; what paint and paper there had ever been on the walls was peeling away; the floor was bare, rotting boards; and generally there was nothing left to show it had ever been inhabited, but an old mattress propped against one wall.

 

   But something _had_ been here.  They could both feel it, even Scully, who had been trying to deny the sickening sensation the building was giving her ever since they stepped through the front entrance. 

 

   "Briggs was right," Mulder said, breaking the tense silence.  "You can feel ... _it_.  Something really bad happened here sometime, Scully."

 

   She nodded.  "I'm not denying that, Mulder, but I can't see anything of relevance here.  There's no sign of habitation, and Tooms obviously isn't around."

 

   "I don't know ...."  Mulder looked around him uncertainly, until his eyes came to rest on the mattress by the wall.  Grimacing, he gingerly pulled it forward and was rewarded by the sight of a large-ish hole in the wall behind.  "Hey, Scully, look at this!"

 

   She helped him pull the mattress away completely, then leaned carefully into the hole, flashing her light around.  "It seems to lead down through the gap inside the walls," she reported, "and - " she paused and tested something with one foot, "there's a metal ladder here."

 

   She looked back at Mulder and saw the expression on his face - a combination of excitement, curiosity and apprehension.  "What do you think's down there?" he asked.

 

   In answer, Scully holstered her gun safely and picked up her flashlight.  "Only one way to find out," she replied matter-of-factly.

 

   The ladder was short, only a handful of rungs down, and when Scully reached the bottom she found herself in what appeared to be the building's basement.  Shining the light around, she saw heavy-duty pipe work everywhere and what looked like ancient electrical fuse boxes on the walls.  It was cold, damp, dirt-encrusted and pitch black, her flashlight barely making an impression on the gloom.

 

   "Mind your head, Mulder," she called quietly.  "The ceiling's pretty low down here."

 

   He appeared beside her and added his light to hers.  "What have we got?"

 

   "A basement, by appearances."

 

   "Okay, let's take a look."

 

   Scully stepped forward slowly and cautiously panned the area with her light.  The basement spread out in front of them, with nothing much worthy of note except what appeared to be a table

against the far wall with a number of objects on it.

 

   "Somebody having a garage sale?" Mulder commented, and went to look. 

 

   It was an old packing crate, the top loaded down with a bizarre assortment of trinkets and personal belongings.  Scully peered over Mulder's shoulder as he picked one particular object up: a small crystal jar with four squat little feet.  He glanced up at her.  "Werner's?"

 

   She pointed to something else: a photo cube.  "That's Usher's."

 

   "I think we've established that the killer has a connection to this building," Mulder nodded grimly.  "And I think we can safely say, based on the evidence, that it's Tooms.  Do you think he lives down here?"

 

   Scully looked around her again.  "There's no sign of anything to suggest he sleeps here."  Her flashlight illuminated the far wall, revealing something odd.  "Mulder, look at this - there's something wrong with the wall."  He followed her over to take a closer look. 

 

   "It looks like it's deteriorating." She frowned.

 

   "No ... someone made it that way.  Look - "  Mulder fingered a piece of old rag sticking out from the mottled surface.  "It's mostly paper and stuff, like papier-mâché.  Jesus, Scully, I think it's a nest."

 

   Scully stared at the mess.  "It's been stuck together with something - look at this yellow stuff."

 

   Mulder saw what she was looking at and touched his fingers to it gingerly.  "Stinks," he commented.

 

   "I know.  It smells kind of familiar."  She wrinkled her nose in disgust - when suddenly it dawned on her what the substance was, and she tried not to gag.  "Oh God, Mulder!  It must be ... I think it's bile."

 

   He jerked his hand away from the structure as if it was burned.  "Shit!"  He looked at her with a queasy expression.  "Is there anyway I can get it off my fingers fast without betraying my cool exterior?" he asked with feeble humour, and tried to wipe his hand on a small section of rag sticking out of the fake wall.

 

   Then he stood up quickly, his brain gearing into rapid thought.  "You know, Scully, I don't think this is where Tooms lives as such - I think this is where he _hibernates_."

 

   She blinked at him in the chancy torchlight.  "Hibernates?"

 

   "Yeah.  In your profile, you said that the source of fascination with the livers could be their rejuvenative powers on the human system, the cleansing of blood and so forth, right?"

 

   "Yes, but - "

 

   "I don't think you were so far wrong," he interrupted.  "Scully, what if he _eats_ them?"

 

   The nausea in her stomach grew at the idea.  "What do you mean?  Why would he want to do that?"

 

   "Suppose this isn't just a serial killer with a particular kink," Mulder said intensely.  "Suppose he actually has a physiological need he has to satisfy to survive.  Hibernation could explain both this nest and the thirty year cycle, Scully.  He wakes up, consumes five human livers to satisfy his bodily needs, then holes up in this structure here and sleeps for thirty years.  It probably explains the lack of ageing, too, because the hibernation process would slow down all bodily functions to nearly nil."

 

   Scully stared at him.  He had definitely flipped.  "Mulder, we're talking about a man here, not a B-movie monster."

 

   "I'm not suggesting he is, Scully.  What I'm suggesting is that he's some kind of genetic mutant, a freak of nature like albinos."  God, he _had_ to believe that Tooms was a one-off event, for his own sanity's sake.  "I think when Briggs suggested that all the horrors in humanity had given birth to an inhuman monster, he was closer to the truth than he  realised."

 

   "That's one hell of a leap, Mulder," Scully retorted.  "This ... this structure and a lot of bile do not provide even a shred of evidence to support such a theory.  The objects on that crate over there, though - those, and the fact that this apartment belonged to Tooms at some point, are evidence enough to suggest that he's behind this."

 

   Mulder didn't waste his breath arguing with her.  "Okay, fine.  In that case, you have to assume that Tooms will come back here, so you need a warrant for his arrest and a surveillance team out here to wait for him."

 

   Scully smiled wryly at this.  "That'll take some finagling," she told him, thinking of Colton's likely reaction when she demanded VCS agents to watch a condemned building for a man he was convinced hadn't committed a crime.

 

   Mulder knew it too, but there wasn't a lot he could do about it.  "I'll keep watch while you go finagle," he offered.

 

   "Okay.  Let's get out of here."

 

   They headed back to the ladder, Mulder in the lead.  He had just put his foot on the first rung when Scully let out a sharp breath.

 

   "What?!"

 

   "I'm caught up on something - no, wait - it's okay."

 

   "Jesus, don't do that to me!  This place gives me the heebies as it is."

 

   She chuckled and they headed out.

 

   Behind them in the darkness, a hand appeared out of the pipe work in the ceiling holding the copper charm bracelet Mulder had given Scully a week before, and a pair of curiously yellow eyes glared ferally out of the boyish face of Eugene Tooms as he watched Scully leave.

 

   Four victims down.

 

   One to go ....

 

xXx

 

   Mulder shifted restlessly in the front seat of Scully's car while he waited for the official surveillance team to arrive.  _Damn Bureau-issue Tauruses are all the same_ , he thought irritably.  _Never enough leg-room ...._

 

   That wasn't strictly true, though, and he knew it.  The real issue was his growing discomfort over Scully.  Sat here, he had far too much time to think.

 

   It wasn't just the fact that as a lone agent she was vulnerable, although that did bother him.  The true issue, however, was something more personal - his growing attraction to her.  He had sworn that after Phoebe he would not, absolutely _not_ , get involved again, and that went double for any female agent.  Sam's arrival had helped cement the resolve, and in fact Mulder had discovered that most single women, while finding the idea of a single father rather cute and New Man-ish, did not generally want to get involved in helping raise another woman's baby; an attitude he was more than happy with.

 

   But when he met Scully in Bellefleur, he'd had to repeat his resolve to himself quite sternly on a couple of occasions.  And the number of occasions thereafter had grown steadily; in fact, until the day she'd walked into that bar and announced she was taking over the X-files, he'd almost forgotten his resolve altogether.  She was young, she was intelligent, she was beautiful, she was on his wavelength - more or less - and most importantly, she was happy to mother Sam when he was around.  He'd started to view something happening between them as not only being inevitable but something to be anticipated.

 

   Five minutes after she'd walked out of the bar, the daydream was shattered.  Jack Willis had appeared beside the table where Mulder was finishing his iced tea, and sat himself down in Scully's vacated seat uninvited.

 

   Frustrated, and not wanting the run that conversation in his head again, Mulder rummaged in the glove compartment for something, anything, that would take his mind off it.  A bag of boiled sweets fell out and, oddly, a guide to the pubs and clubs of London.  He tried to interest himself in an out-of-date description of Stringfellows and the Hard Rock Cafe, but it wasn't enough.

 

   Willis's voice had been cold, almost threatening.  "Dana's going up the ladder, Spooky.  She doesn't need her reputation in the Bureau wiped out because you won't stay off her back."

 

   "You mean _you_ don't want _your_ chances with her ruined because I won't stay out of your way!" he had snapped back unwisely.

 

   But Willis had been perfectly calm.  "I'm not worried about where I stand with Dana.  We've been seeing each other for the better part of eighteen months now - or didn't she tell you that?"

 

   No, she hadn't.  She still hadn't.  Although why should she?  And yet ....  Mulder wanted to discount the things Willis had said, simply because there was no evidence to support them and a number of indications to suggest that Scully was interested in him. 

 

   And that was the problem.  Mulder had been caught out once before by a woman who played husband off against lover.  He had thought Phoebe loved him; perhaps once she _did_ , but she also loved playing with his mind and playing with his loyalty.  Every instinct screamed that Scully was different, not like that, but experience and the memory of that ring with its square-cut diamond solitaire in its velvet box in Scully's drawer, coldly warned him to be wary.

 

_I wish I really knew what was going on,_ he thought, staring blankly at the decrepit facade of 66 Exeter Street.  _I wish I had the nerve to ask Scully outright.  I wish ....  I wish my life was different.  I wish my father wasn't a drunk, that my sister hadn't died, that my mother was everything she appears to be, that I hadn't screwed up my life by marrying Phoebe, and that I didn't have to give up my job at the Bureau.  I wish ...._

 

_I wish I'd never met Scully, then I'd be at home playing trains with Sam, not sitting here waiting for a serial killer to appear -_

_No, that's not true._

 

   He couldn't regret having met Scully.  He didn't regret having got into this investigation.  But he had to get over this attraction to her, which was going to get him into trouble if he wasn't careful.  They were good friends; they could stay that way, and there would be no damage done.

 

   Mulder was jerked out of his reverie by the sound of another car drawing up behind him.  A few minutes later, two male agents he was vaguely familiar with got into the car with him.

 

   "Okay," the one in the front passenger seat said, without preamble.  "We've got the warrant, but what are we looking for again?"

 

   Mulder found the arrest report and mug shot of Tooms Scully had left with him.  "Eugene Victor Tooms.  He's unarmed, but consider him extremely dangerous."

 

   Both of them studied the picture, and the man next to him shrugged.  "Okay.  We'll take over from here."

 

   Mulder handed the picture and report over.  "Scully will be back with someone else to relieve you in eight hours, if he doesn't show."

 

   "You got it ... Spooky."

 

   His companion in the back seat choked back a laugh, and Mulder got out of the car with a sigh.  He didn't think he'd ever get used to that name.

 

xXx

 

   Eight hours later, Scully was impatiently waiting at the Baltimore police headquarters for the agent who was supposed to be partnering her on the stakeout.  He was late, very late, and she was getting angry.

 

   Abruptly, the door opened and Tom Colton walked in.  His face was flushed and he was wearing an expression of combined anger and excitement.  "We have to talk," he told her.

 

   "Damn right we do!" Scully snapped.  "Where's Esgrave?  We were supposed to be relieving Kennedy and Kramer half an hour ago!"

 

   "Esgrave won't be joining you.  I've called off the stakeout."

 

   Scully stared at him in disbelief.  "What?!  But - "

 

   "What the hell are you playing at, Dana?" Colton interrupted.  "I got called in this afternoon but the Regional SAC to be told that you'd got a warrant out for the arrest of a suspect we'd already eliminated from our enquiries!"

 

   "If you'd looked at the evidence Mulder and I collected - "

 

   "Mulder, Mulder, Mulder," he snapped.  "That's all I hear from you!  When I asked you to join me on this case, it was because of my respect for you as an agent.  But now I've seen how you've been brainwashed by that guy - I couldn't have you far enough away."

 

   "My investigation is separate from yours, Tom," Scully said, trying to keep her voice level, "and it was approved by AD Skinner.  You had no right to call off that stakeout."

 

   "No," he agreed, a nasty smile appearing, "but SAC Claymont did, especially when he heard about the waste of his manpower.  I understand he'll be filing a report with the Assistant Director in the morning."

 

   Scully stared at his smug expression, fuming, but knew she was defeated.  There was nothing for it but to go home and wait for the fifth and final murder to occur.  She picked up her bag and coat.  "Is this what it takes to climb the ladder, Tom?" she enquired coldly.

 

   "All the way to the top, Dana."

 

   "Then I can't wait to see you fall off and land on your ass!" she snapped and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

 

   Her temper was not helped during the drive home by getting caught in the traffic, so she was in an evil mood by the time she pulled up in front of her apartment block.  Walking into her apartment, she threw her bag, coat and gun down on the coffee table and stood for a moment, trying to physically rub some of the tension out of her shoulders.

 

   This was no good.  She had to calm down. 

 

   Scully walked through to her bathroom, deciding that a long soak was just what she needed, and set the taps running.  Then she went into the bedroom, kicked off her shoes, and picked up the cordless phone by her bed and dialled Mulder's number.  She felt he had a right to know about Colton's actions.  The line was engaged.  She sighed, and put the phone down.

 

   Back in the bathroom, she tested the water with her fingers - still running cold.  She went into the kitchen to get herself a drink, then went back to the bedroom and began to unbutton her blouse.  She tried Mulder's number again; still engaged. 

 

   Scully went back to the bathroom again and tested the water.  It was running hot, so she shoved the plug in and selected a bath oil, tipping in a generous measure of the herb-scented liquid.  _I need something soothing,_ she thought wryly.

 

   She was just capping the bottle again when something splattered on her hand.  Scully stared uncomprehendingly at the yellowish fluid for a second, then her brain suddenly kicked in.

 

   _No ...._   Slowly, reluctantly, she raised her hand to her nose and sniffed.

 

   It was bile.

 

   Her head jerked back reflexively as she looked up at the ceiling.  There was a grill above her head, an air-conditioning vent less than a foot square, and the yellow liquid was dripping from the bars.

 

xXx

 

   Mulder had spent the afternoon playing with Sam and getting his papers ready for a test in class the next day.  By six-thirty he'd fed the boy and put him to bed, and then he had dinner with his mother.  Afterwards, some friends of Mrs. Mulder's had arrived and, feeling decidedly out of place, Mulder decided to call Scully and find out what was happening.  A call to her cell phone got the message that it was switched off; and there was no reply from her home number.  When he checked the clock, he realised that by now she was probably heading out to take her turn on the stakeout.

 

   He was restless and had little to do, with his mother monopolising the study and Sam asleep, so in the end he put his head around the door and told his mother he was going out for a while.

 

   He headed for 66 Exeter Street, thinking that he might as well spend some time swapping banter with Scully - and whatever bonehead she had with her - on stakeout.  But when he arrived, the alley was dark and empty, with no sign of a Bureau-issue Taurus.

 

   "What the hell - ?" he muttered.  He parked the car, and got out.  Definitely no one about.  Had they caught Tooms already?  But if they had, Scully would have called him - she promised she would.

 

   Mulder had a bad feeling about this, though.  He headed for the trunk of his car and dug out his flashlight.  Much as he hated the thought, he had to pay a visit to Tooms's hideout and see what was going on.

 

   Entering the building was twice as bad in the dark and alone as it had been that morning in Scully's company, but Mulder forced himself to make his way up to apartment 103 and through the hole in the wall. 

 

   The basement was as still and empty as before.  Mulder checked the wall, but it didn't seem to have been disturbed, so he turned to the packing crate and looked over the objects gathered there.  And when he did, his blood ran cold.

 

   Among all the other trinkets was something new, hanging from the neck of an ornate crystal vase and glowing richly in the beam of the flashlight.

 

   It was the bracelet he'd given Scully, its little moon and stars charms twinkling.

 

   Mulder let out an explosive breath as the sense of something being wrong peaked. 

 

   "Oh Jesus - Scully!"

 

xXx

 

   It would be inaccurate to say that Scully didn't panic, but she controlled the impulse sharply.  Moving swiftly, aware that Tooms could be anywhere in her apartment already, she went through to the living room and retrieved her gun from the coffee table.  Having the cool metal of the Sig Sauer in her hands restored her confidence, but she was by no means out of the woods yet.

 

   Scully knew she had to get help and fast, because she had a strong notion that shooting Tooms wouldn't necessarily stop him.  She grabbed the phone on the sideboard and dialled 911.

 

   It was then that she discovered the phone was dead.

 

   This time, when the panic set in there was little she could do to hold it back.  With no help from the police, her colleagues or even Mulder, she was a sitting duck in her own apartment - she had to get out.

 

   Without stopping to take anything with her, Scully ran for the door, but as she ran through the hallway leading to the kitchen, a ventilation grill down by the floor burst open.  A filthy hand shot out, grabbing her ankle and yanking hard, bringing her crashing to the floor with a muffled shriek.  The gun was knocked from her hand and went skittering out of reach.

 

   He was monstrously strong.  Scully kicked out frantically and succeeded in freeing herself, but her triumph was short; she barely had time to pull herself back across the floor a couple of feet before his other hand slithered through the hole ... then both arms and elbows ... and his head ....  In front of her shocked and terrified eyes, Tooms's whole body seemed to ooze out of the vent at high speed.

 

   She just had time to drag herself into the bathroom doorway before he was out and leaping onto her, his boyish face contorted and bestial.  Scully scrabbled for her gun desperately, but in vain.  Tooms flipped her over onto her back like a playing card, and straddled her thighs.  Her blouse, which she had unbuttoned in preparation for undressing for her bath, gaped open; he planted his left hand solidly on her chest, pinning her to the floor, and raised the other, fingers stiffened like claws, above her stomach.

 

   Scully closed her eyes, aware that nothing she could do would save her now.

 

   Then, like a gift from God, she heard the front door crashing open. 

 

   "SCULLY!"

 

   Tooms jerked his head back, staring at the doorway, and suddenly the pressure on her chest and thighs was gone as he made a leap towards her bathroom window.  But the glass was reinforced, defeating his first attempt to break through it, and giving Scully a chance to drag herself to her feet and hurl herself after him.

 

   Mulder burst through the bathroom door as she did so, and flung himself into the fray.  Tooms fought like a madman, tossing Scully to one side with ease, but Mulder was a tougher opponent. 

 

   There was a confused tussle after that, in which Mulder was later convinced he'd got a close-up of just about every nook and cranny of Scully's bathroom, before Scully herself reappeared, seizing one of Tooms's flailing arms.  There were two sharp rasping clicks, and Tooms found himself handcuffed by one wrist to the cold tap of Scully's antique, claw-footed bath.

 

   Mulder dragged himself to his feet, panting and feeling as though he'd just gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson.  He looked at Scully; she'd sunk down onto the lid of the toilet, her hair wild and her blouse in shreds, but she was alive and relatively unharmed.

 

   Thank God.

 

   Then he looked at Tooms, who was glaring back at him balefully, panting and tugging futilely at the handcuffs. 

 

   "You won't get your quota this year," Mulder told him, with concentrated venom.

 

xXx

 

   The aftermath of the incident seemed to take forever to clear up.

 

   Mulder went to Scully's neighbours to borrow their phone and call Baltimore PD, and within twenty minutes the building was swarming with police and FBI agents.  Tooms was taken away, heavily handcuffed, statements were taken from the two of them.  The Regional SAC appeared to find out what was going on, calls were made to the Bureau headquarters, more statements were taken, and then a medical examiner appeared to check both Scully and Mulder over.  Fortunately, neither had more than bruising and scrapes.

 

   Finally, about three hours later, the last of the officers and agents vanished again, leaving the pair of them alone.  Mulder, who had forgotten what a long-drawn-out pain in the rear the aftermath of a case was, was glad to see the back of them.

 

   He shut the door, and went to see where Scully was.  She was flaked out on her sofa, looking exhausted.

 

   "You look like you could do with a strong coffee or something," he said gently, concerned at the worn look on her face. 

 

   "Or something," she admitted.

 

   "Stay here and I'll go make coffee."

 

   Scully elected to follow him into the kitchen, though, and sat at the pine table, watching him rummaging through her cupboards, measuring coffee out and boiling the kettle.  She found the mugs for him, and after a pause, went to one cupboard and rummaged around at the back of it until she found a bottle of Navy rum her father had given her a couple of years back.

 

   "Here," she said, and poured a stiff dose into each mug.  "I think we need it."

 

   Mulder didn't argue.  He felt numb right now, a state he recognised from cases in his past as being a form of shock, and he knew that while he would be fine tonight, and possibly for as much as a week, sooner or later he was going to suffer for this incident in the form of nightmares - it was always the same, especially after the close call Scully had had.  His brain would be running and re-running the scenario, pointing out what could have happened.  He took a deep swallow of the strong black coffee and felt the rum burn the back of his throat.

 

   "How did you know to come here?" Scully asked suddenly, startling him.

 

   "What do you mean?" he returned blankly.

 

   "Mulder, you turned up just in the nick of time.  How did you know Tooms was here?"

 

   "Oh ....  Well, I didn't have much to do so I thought I'd join you on stakeout, but when I got there, there was no one around.  So I took a look in his hideaway, and saw - " Mulder paused, and suddenly remembered that he had something for her.  He rummaged in his pocket and found the delicate little bracelet, which he held out to her mutely.

 

   Scully stared for a moment, then slowly went to take it from his hand.  But instead, his fingers closed around hers tightly, shaking a little.  Her vision blurred, and she scrambled from her seat to go to him, almost throwing herself into his arms.  Mulder grabbed and held her tightly, burying his face in her hair, and felt her nose rubbing his collarbone.  She was trembling ever so slightly.

 

   There was nothing platonic about the embrace.  He could feel her breasts pressed against his chest and smell the very female scent of her body, and all the good intentions he'd made before lunch flew straight out of the window.  The physical reaction was almost instantaneous, and there was no way he could hide it from her.  But Scully didn't care; this was exactly what she wanted.  She reached up on tiptoe and captured his lips with hers.

 

   For several minutes, Mulder made no attempt to resist, so engrossed as he was in the taste and feel of her mouth.  But when he felt her beginning to ease his shirt from his jeans, reality suddenly zoomed back into focus with a vengeance, and he remembered with bitter clarity that she was not free to do this with him.

 

   Mulder broke the kiss and gently eased her hands away from his body.  He was shocked at how cold the room suddenly seemed with the cessation of physical contact.  "Scully ... no ...." he managed, trying to get his breath back.

 

   At once he was confronted by a pair of very bewildered and rather hurt blue eyes.  "But Mulder - "

 

   She reached out again, and he took her wrists, holding her gently but firmly away from him.  "No, Scully, we can't do this."

 

   "Yes, we can - "

 

   "No, we can't," he insisted quietly.

 

   Scully swallowed hard, blinking rapidly, and it twisted his heart to see that she was trying not to cry.  But she looked him straight in the eye nevertheless.  "Why not?" she demanded, trying to keep her voice steady.

 

   Mulder let go of her wrists and backed away slightly.  "Because you're not free to do this with me."

 

   She looked surprised.  "What do you mean?"

 

   "I mean that you're seeing someone else."

 

   For a moment she looked blank, then understanding suddenly flooded in and she straightened up, folding her arms.  "How did you find out about Jack?" she asked, the sharpness of the question at radical odds with her breathy voice moments before.

 

   _Oh God._   Mulder felt a horrible leaden lump of dread and depression settling in his stomach at her tone.  This was suddenly shaping into one of his fights with Phoebe, back in the days before he'd summoned up the courage to leave her.  _I don't need this, I don't want this, not again ...._   "He told me," he said flatly, and wondered how fast he could get out of her apartment and avoid this conversation.

 

   His bald statement actually gave Scully a pause, though.  "How?" she demanded finally.  "When?"

 

   "Does it really matter?"  _Where's my jacket, dammit?_

 

   "Yes," she retorted, "it matters to me.  What did he tell you?"

 

   "Look, Scully, I really don't see the need for this conversation," Mulder stated, growing desperate.  He pushed past her, out of the kitchen and into the living room. 

 

   "Mulder - "

 

   His jacket was on the sofa; he grabbed it and headed for the door.  _Let me out, let me out, let me out -_

 

   "Mulder, please don't leave."

 

   The simple statement was so sad and quiet that it halted him in his tracks.  His hand was on the door handle, and he was dimly conscious of it shaking. 

 

   Scully stepped up behind him quietly, close enough that he could smell her distinctive perfume, but far enough away that she wasn't invading his personal space.  "Mulder ... I know it must be hard for you to trust women after what Phoebe did to you, but if you leave now you'll never know if Jack was really telling you the truth."

 

   "You could have told me right from the beginning," Mulder replied, disgusted with the way his voice was shaking but unable to stop it. "There were a dozen opportunities when you could have."

 

   She sighed.  "Yes, I know, and with hindsight I should have.  But it wasn't something I wanted to talk about, Mulder - I don't exactly come out of it with much credit myself, and when I transferred from Quantico, it seemed like too many people already knew why."

 

   Mulder swallowed, his throat dry.  That was one thing he could empathise with; he too had stood under the glare of his colleagues' scrutiny when his personal life was dramatically made public to what seemed like everyone working for the Bureau, right down to the lowliest cleaner.

 

   There was a long pause, then Scully said gently, "Please come and sit down.  We need to talk about this - no strings, just talk."

 

   Mulder sagged, feeling very tired.  He nodded.  "Okay."

 

xXx

 

   "For the record, I haven't dated Jack in nearly eight months," Scully stated, from where she sat curled up on the sofa.  Mulder sat in an armchair opposite, cradling his coffee mug in his lap.  "We got involved just before I graduated from Quantico, but it didn't get serious until I took a teaching position there.  It was okay for a while, but we ... had differences that just never seemed to get resolved and eventually we had a pretty acrimonious bust-up, as I'm sure you've already worked out.  We both got called on the carpet by Assistant Director Hill - "

 

   "Gerry Hill?" Mulder interrupted.

 

   "Yes - you know her?"

 

   A wry smile crossed his face.  "Yeah, we've had a few run-ins in the past."

 

   Scully stared, bemused but not especially surprised.  "Is there anyone you _haven't_ had a run-in with at the Bureau, Mulder?"

 

   "I'd have to plead the Fifth on that ...."

 

   She shook her head and decided to leave it.  "Anyway ... with Jack unable to return to field duty, and there being no other openings available in Forensics or Pathology for me at the time, I took a voluntary transfer which allowed them to move me without putting an official reprimand on my record.  And when I moved to the VCS, I decided that was the end of it between us.  Aside from it being over anyway, I didn't need to give the gossips any more encouragement than they already had to talk about me.  But Jack wouldn't leave it there."

 

   "He seems to think you're still dating," Mulder commented blandly.

 

   "Is that what he told you?"

 

   "Words to that effect."

 

   "I'm not surprised."  Scully looked down at her hands for a moment, and then back up at him.  "He never really let go.  I think there was a space of about a month after the initial split, then he started calling me - just to talk, he said.  He seemed quite resigned to what had happened, and I didn't want to be on bad terms with him, so I went along with it.  Then one day it was "how about lunch?" and like a fool, I accepted.  Next thing I knew, it was flowers, e-mails, three and four calls a day ... so I cut him off pretty sharply again, and thought that was it.  But no such luck.  Now I can go for two or three weeks without hearing from him, then I'll get a rash of messages on my answering machine.  He e-mailed me the other day, when I met you for lunch at Rosenthals, demanding to meet up somewhere."

 

   Mulder suddenly became very interested in the arm of his chair.  "That was when I ran into him," he said after a moment.

 

   Scully's eyes widened slightly.  "When?"

 

   "Five minutes after you left.  He was there all the time, watching us, and I guess what he saw really pissed him off, because he had a lot to say."

 

   Her eyes narrowed.  "Such as?"

 

   Mulder shook his head.  "Doesn't matter."

 

   "Yes it does.  To me."  Scully uncurled herself and went to his side, crouching beside the chair.  He wouldn't look at her, staring into his coffee mug instead, so she reached out and gently lifted his chin until he was looking her in the eye.  "Mulder, please don't let Jack come between us.  I value what we have, and I could kill him for making you think I was playing with you.  I would _never_ do that, do you understand?  I couldn't hurt you that way."

 

   He let out a long breath and relaxed, leaning back in the chair rather limply.  After a moment he gave her a faint smile.  "I'm too tired for all this, Scully."

 

   She smiled back, a little sadly.  "Yeah, so am I."  She stood up and held out one hand.  "Here, let me have your cup."  He handed it over, and she took it out to the kitchen, rinsing both mugs under the tap.

 

   After a moment, she heard him come up behind her and was surprised to feel his arms snaking around her waist from behind.  She turned in his grasp and ran her hands lightly over his chest, looking up at him with a small smile.  "I thought you were tired?"

 

   The returning smile held a hint of mischief in it.  "Maybe, maybe not."

 

   Scully swallowed a grin and brushed her hands over his chest, shoulders, throat and then gently over his chin and lips.  When her fingertips met the latter, she felt him press a kiss to them, and was surprised to feel a sudden powerful surge of heat through her body.

 

   _Yes ...._   "Stay with me," she whispered, "just for a while at least."

 

   For a moment Mulder hesitated, remembering his responsibilities at home.  But they would be alright for a couple of hours.  He bent and kissed her, hard.  "I'd like that."

 

xXx

 

   Perhaps half an hour later, Scully's phone rang in the living room.  It continued for a few rings, then the answering machine picked it up.

 

   "Hi, this is Dana Scully.  I can't come to the phone right now; please leave a message and I'll get back to you."

 

   There was a pause, then a male voice spoke rather roughly.  "Dana, it's Jack.  I heard what happened tonight - if you're there, pick up ....  Dana, come on, I know you're there - " 

 

   Neither of the two in the bedroom heard.

 

 

Finis

 


End file.
